Predilection
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Every kink is a writing challenge this author hasn't met yet. I dared Tumblr to bring it on.
1. Pt 1: Collars

_Every kink is a writing challenge this author hasn't met yet. I dared Tumblr to bring it on._

* * *

 **Title:** Predilection

 **Warning:** Kinks. All of them I could write.

 **Rating:** R

 **Continuity:** IDW, G1, Prime

 **Characters:** I tried for as many different pairings as I could cram in.

 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play. I deserve cookies for writing this but have yet to receive any. TnT weeeeh.

 **Motivation (Prompt): "** Reblog with your personal kink/fetish. Not in the notes; you put that sucker right in the reblog where it can be seen, fraggit. And don't reblog off somebody else's reblog. Come back to the original so I can _see_ it." 42,000 words, 65 separate kinks, from Dec. 12 to just under a half an hour until Dec. 25, I dared Tumblr to bring it on, and they did, but _I wrote everything thrown at me!_ Ha! Ahahaha, **I win!**

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 1:** _"_ collars _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He noticed, because of course he did, but he didn't understand what he was seeing for days.

Prowl, with a wide choker in softest black velvet, no marker or apparent closure. It was simply a solid band around his neck that appeared out of nowhere. Ratchet wouldn't have even seen it if Prowl hadn't been holding his head high in absentminded display, proud but distracted.

Jazz, with a gaudy, ill-fitting, bright red plastic ring bedazzled in chinzy silver studs and hung with dogtags that chimed with every step he took. Ratchet swore the master of stealth and sabotage put an extra bounce in his step to make the tags jangle and ring as the collar swung around and around his neck. He beamed brightly at the medic but jingled away before Ratchet could process just what he'd seen.

Ironhide, with barbed wire cinched shut by an iron padlock, vintage metal dull against aged neck cables. The barbs did little but scratch already dinged cabling, but Ironhide always had liked a bit of pain. The quiet sound of metal-on-metal alerted Ratchet to the oddity like a constant reminder that there was something there.

Wheeljack, with a collar of bubblewrap and duct tape, optics squinched up in amusement as he walked out of the Prime's office. He nodded to Ratchet in passing. The medic turned to gape after him.

Fingers stole around his neck from behind, the warmth of a taller mech stepping close to his back sending anticipation shivering down his struts. "Is it my turn?" Ratchet asked in a husky voice.

Optimus Prime nuzzled the side of his neck, leisurely stretching length of bandage around his throat, holding the ends tight for a moment as though to pull Ratchet backward against him. The hint of pressure was all the urging Ratchet needed, and he leaned back against the Prime as the bandage was tied into a tidy bow. Thin and white, the gauze barely showed up against his neck.

Optimus' hands lingered, stroking the vulnerable cables of his throat, and a more visible mark of possession really wasn't necessary.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	2. Pt 2: Pet Mechs

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 2:** _"_ **Pet play** (total willing subservience, care taking of another being, playing with them as though they are actually a non-sentient pet) _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"This is foolish."

"They like it."

"They are perfectly capable of doing such things amongst themselves. I fail to see why outside assistance is required."

Prowl could almost hear Ratchet roll his optics on the other side of the connection, which was quite a feat considering optics didn't roll, and if they did, it would be silent. "You're missing the point. Yes, they're capable. They just like not having to do it themselves."

He paused with his hand on the door to the supply closet. "They enjoy being helpless?"

Another soundless, impossible optic roll. "Have you ever known any of them to be helpless? Prowl, they like being pampered, and they just like it when we play along with them."

He didn't understand, but this wasn't about his understanding. This was about four mode-locked vehicles who'd been out playing in the mud, evidently, and the exasperated medic without the time to indulge their peculiar fetish today. However, since the foolishness was apparently filed under both 'teambuilding exercise' and 'medically advised stress relief,' _someone_ had to fill in for him.

Leaving Prowl toting an armful of towels, a bucket, and several tins of wax into Cargo Bay 3, where most of the Ark's assigned Special Operations mechs had zoomed after coming in out of the mud. They were currently chasing each other around the room leaving skidmarks everywhere. Jazz appeared to be doing donuts in the center of the room for no discernible reason. Prowl watched for a moment, confused. Was the Porsche attempting to chase his own bumper? That was physically impossible. Besides, what Jazz did think he'd do if he caught it?

Shaking the thought away, Prowl put down his armload of supplies. The four Autobots were aware of his arrival, he knew, but they ignored him in favor of a determined effort to spread as much mud over the room and each other as physically possible. Jazz spun out, reversed, and promptly started spinning the other direction. Hound zoomed by _in_ reverse, pursued by Bumblebee and Mirage.

Prowl sighed from all his vents and pulled up his instructions to doublecheck the prep list. Also to confirm that he had to do this. Yes; the medical orders glowed in the header of the document.

Did he want to do this? Not really. But he was here, he was available, and Ratchet had recruited him into…whatever this was.

Kneeling down, Prowl rummaged through the pile to find the biggest towel to open over his lap. Then he opened another one between his hands in anticipation of catching a wet car to the chest. Resetting his vocalizer, he called, "Jazz? Here. Come here."

Incoming!

Horn blaring, Jazz drove up over Prowl's knees as if he had Trailbreaker's suspension system instead of a sportscar's. Prowl oofed lightly as he caught his fellow officer with the towel. It was a more difficult prospect than he'd imagined. No matter what form, Jazz was unbelievably wriggly.

"Settle down. Down. Jazz! Down!" he snapped when Jazz kept clamping his hood shut on the towel, yanking it back and forth. Jazz played the part of a misbehaving pet disturbingly well. It was easier than Prowl had thought it'd be to fall into a caretaker's role. After two attempts to free the towel, his temper sparked, and he barked, "Bad! Bad Jazz! Stop that this instant!" at the unruly vehicle.

Jazz immediately let go, hood releasing the towel and side mirrors wilting down. Suddenly Prowl had a warm lapful of contrite vehicle trying to burrow into his midriff as though forgiveness could be found there. Windshield wiper fluid welled up out of Jazz's sprayers and overflowed down his fenders, leaving clean trails in the mud.

Prowl ignored the nuzzling and firmly resettled the troublesome Porsche across his thighs. "Shame on you," he scolded as he swiped at muddy wheelwells. "You know better."

A worried engine whine from under his doors took him by surprise, and he twisted at the waist. Wide optics fell on the three quiet SpecOps vehicles huddled behind him. Mirage, low-slung and cloaked in stealth, was practically sitting on his heels.

In that moment of distraction, Jazz accelerated in a surge up into his lap, hood popping open and shut on the towel. Prowl whipped back around too late.

Four cars accelerated from a standstill, clutches popping their laughter. They drove pellmell around the room, one of them dragging an oversized towel. Prowl stared, stupefied. Jazz reversed to face him from across the room, rear tires wiggling from side to side so his aft wagged as he flattened low over his front tires, shaking the seized towel as if daring Prowl to come after it. Never had a wordless ' _Play with me!'_ been said so loudly.

If Prowl could have, he'd have rolled his optics.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	3. Pt 3: Cuddled Pet-Submissives

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 3:** _"_ Cuddled pet-submissives _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Having a truly large mech around the _Ark_ made offduty time _so_ much better. He had the size to make any and all of them feel small, but also the gentleness to make them feel protected. Some large mechs never quite fit into social circles outside their own size class, but Skyfire had been around smaller frametypes his entire life. He moved with the peculiar care of a giant conscious of who might be underfoot, touched people and things with his strength carefully controlled, and it made the people around him feel oddly…treasured. He always looked down at them, touched them, as though they were precious.

As a bonus, Skyfire was used to Starscream. If that mech didn't have a pushy need for praise and pampering a kilometer wide, Red Alert would eat Sparkplug's boots, and anybody used to that level of prima donna behavior could deal with the Autobots no problem. The shuttleformer hadn't even blinked the first time someone ventured an overture toward his lap. He handled the crew's demands for attention like a pro.

"Yes, yes, I know," he said now, absently pushing Sideswipe aside as he made his way to the couch. Bumblebee and Seaspray popped through the common room door like mechs on a mission, heading straight for the large Autobot settling himself into the couch for the evening. Sideswipe was already jigging from foot to foot in whining impatience. "Yes yes. I've been away. You're so neglected. I know, I know. Let me at least sit down first," Skyfire said.

He set his ration cube and latest science journal near at hand, then patted his thigh. The red frontliner threw himself into the open lap with aggression normally shown to whatever Decepticon got in his way. Skyfire oofed lightly as he squirmed about trying to get comfortable.

"Easy! That's my cockpit, Sideswipe," he chided. Big hands caught Sideswipe around the waist, picking him up with casual ease, and Sideswipe whined earnestly as he was rearranged into a better position curled on his side, arm clamped around Skyfire's thigh. He was beyond words at this point. Skyfire understood his pleading optics, however, and merely stroked a hand down the curve of his backstrut.

Eager little whimpers preceded two minibots nudging under Skyfire's elbow. Bumblebee and Seaspray wanted their share of attention, too!

Skyfire lifted his arm to allow them into his lap. Sideswipe grunted as they promptly dogpiled on top of him, and Skyfire mentally resigned himself to not reading anytime soon.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	4. Pt 4: Protective Cuddles

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 4:** _"_ Protective cuddles _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

They weren't exactly the cuddly type. Sunstreaker had the _Look, Don't Touch_ of an expensive art piece down pat, and Sideswipe was a walking arsenal. Literally. That was his job. People didn't cuddle walking arsenals. They didn't cuddle stationary arsenals. Unless they were Cliffjumper, but he was a special case of proportions in direct contrast to his size.

Anyway, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe weren't fluffy supportive types, but there were times they were the correct tools for the job. Not often, but sometimes, and when it happened, they came running on the double because usually the one making the call was Ratchet. Nobody with half a functioning brain module pissed a medic off. And if they didn't agree with his assessment of their abilities, hey, they didn't argue. In their opinion, it didn't matter if they were square pegs. Ratchet could make any shape imaginable fit into a round hole when push came to shove. It was for the best that pegs and hole didn't quibble and just let him get on with it.

Which was how Sunstreaker and Sideswiipe came to be spending the night in Ironhide's bunk. Ratchet prescribed frontliners, so frontliners were what the old armsmaster got. Ironhide grumbled but took his prescription back to the barracks with him.

Sideswipe grimaced uncomfortably from where he was squeezed tight, spooned with his back to Ironhide's chest. "Ugh."

"Shh," Ironhide said, curt and hard, and Sideswipe stilled. He was still uncomfortable, still frowning, but this wasn't about him. It was about the anger running underneath the steady rumble of Ironhide's engine and the suspicious snap of cold blue optics toward every shifting shadow in the barracks. Ironhide was running hairtrigger-tense.

Pressed between the wall and Ironhide's back, every move Sunstreaker made could be felt by the old mech. The golden frontliner deliberately cocked his sidearm, loaded and safety off despite safety regulations explicitly forbidding it, and Ironhide stiffened to a statue as hard as his namesake. Suspicion radiated off him.

Sunstreaker ignored the hard-edged, prickly tension aimed at him and instead draped his arm over both Ironhide and Sideswipe, the muzzle of his blaster pointed vaguely at whatever might come at them. "Recharge," he growled, even deeper than Ironhide's rusty drawl.

Sideswipe held himself motionless, but the discomfort of lying this way suddenly didn't matter. He was in a poor position to recharge but in an excellent defensive position. The deep, full pockets of his subspace were in the forefront of his mind, the meticulously organized contents a constantly scrolling list down one side of his HUD. Sunstreaker's hand held the blaster tight. The two of them could blow half this base to bits before anyone got near the mech sandwiched between them.

They weren't the cuddly sort, but maybe that's what soothed Ironhide to sleep at last.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	5. Pt 5: Competitive Cuddles

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 5:** _"Competitive cuddles (_ guilty pleasure) _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

There was an immediate turf war the minute Optimus Prime blew a tire.

It wasn't a debilitating injury by any means. Even Earth semis blew tires frequently on the rough organic matter that made up roadways on this planet, and the Prime, despite scanning the form, hadn't been made for this world. Asphalt was hard on alien-imitated wheels. Most of the Autobots blew tires if they drove on Earth roads long enough. They swerved how he did, startled and hurt, although they didn't have quite as much trailer to wag around as a driving hazard.

The convoy braked, scattering to dodge a pile-up. The soldiers transformed and sighed, exasperated by the necessity of borrowing a spare off someone to limp back to base on. Spare tires couldn't take full speed. The rest of this drive was going to be slow.

Unlike the rest of the Autobots, however, a slow, careful drive wasn't all this meant. Optimus Prime blowing a tire could result in confinement to Medical overnight - if Ratchet won the battle among the officers in the convoy, that was. A silent battle that started right there on the road, as most of them were too dignified to let the rank and file know they were fighting over 'comforting' the rattled Prime.

Ratchet's engine growled like a junkyard dog, but his siren blipped surprise as Wheeljack and Irondhide suddenly ganged up on him. The two officers bracketed the medic, their engines louder and running rougher as they ramped up to drown him out. It was an unfair move, but it worked. Ratchet eased off, sulking, and Wheeljack's souped-up racing engine howled victory.

Prematurely, as the engineer-armsmaster team-up had the unexpected side-effect of turning two bitter rivals into allies. *"I'll take the berthplay if you want to be the little spoon,"* Prowl had offered only seconds earlier, knowing only a truly generous gesture could overturn years of one-upping each other in this peculiar form of infighting.

Sacrificing Prime-cuddles did the trick. *"Done,"* Jazz transmitted curtly even as he sped up for a showy flip through transformation right overtop of Wheeljack. "Prime! You gotta learn to dance it off," he called, turning his landing into a stroll toward their leader. "Want me to show you how it's done?"

Ironhide lunged forward but pulled up short as a low-slung Datsun abruptly cut in front of him. The grill covering Prowl's taillights tinked harmlessly against his front bumper. It was a warning gesture backed up by the silent, slow flash of emergency lights. Prowl kept his lights on a moment more, physically barring the armsmaster from driving forward until Jazz had already engaged Optimus Prime in sweet, seductive, post-tire-blowing conversation. Very few things rattled the Prime enough to accept an offer to spend the night in someone's arms, but blowing a tire was one such thing.

And so long as Jazz remembered that Prowl received at least half of the attention once the Prime's agreement was secured, then the police car was going to sit here and stare Ironhide down.

*"Playin' dirty,"* Ironhide growled.

*"You started it,"* Prowl pointed out.

*"Not fair,"* Wheeljack sighed, smart enough to know when he was outmaneuvered. *"I wanted to snuggle tonight."*

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	6. Pt 6: Vanilla

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 6:** _"_ Vanilla (handholding,cuddling, snuggling) _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Skyfire was massive.

No. No, stop and think about that, because Optimus Prime did quite frequently. Stop and look at the other Autobots. With the exception of the Dinobots or Omega Supreme, there wasn't a mech among them bigger than the Prime. Omega Supreme was far too conscious of their respective ranks to relax from formal behavior around him, and the Dinobots distrusted the Autobots too much. With good reason, but it saddened Ratchet and Wheeljack that their creations never shared their friendly, touchy group roughhousing with any of the other Autobots. Optimus Prime understood the Dinobots' reasoning, even respected and regretted it, but it made him sad for an entirely different reason.

Optimus Prime had been a protector ever since the day Orion died on the docks. And sure, there was something to be said about trauma and reaction, making him crave control, to be the one capable of defending himself and all those under his protection, but the war had stretched on and on. Nine million years was a long time to go without dealing with his issues. He'd faced his fears too many times not to get over the worst of what had happened to him.

It left him playing a role he occasionally tired of. He craved the surrender he offered others. The ability to lay down his worries and rest in the safety of someone else's embrace required trust, but there was a far simpler yearning at the spark of it: the chance to be held in the arms of someone much larger. It let him feel small. It let him relax.

Optimus Prime sighed softly, cuddling closer to Skyfire's cockpit. "Comfortable?" the shuttle asked him without the edge of sarcasm Ratchet might offer, the nervousness Bumblebee or Sideswipe might feel. All that came through Skyfire's voice was mild inquiry. Skyfire cared that he was comfortable, but it was more that he offered conversation if the little sigh was an indication Optimus wanted to talk.

"Mm." The Prime nuzzled warm white armor, and huge arms hid him from the world. "I'm fine."

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	7. Pt 7: Snuggly Aftercare

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 7:** _"_ Snuggly aftercare _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"The hardest part of the job," the tough, diamond-sparked Chief Medical Officer of the Autobots told his protégé, "is watching people you could save die before you get to them."

First Aid's visor stayed fixed on him. The deep blue color of it indicated a student earnestly believing everything he was told. He nodded in absolute agreement. Ratchet squinted as if assessing him for duty. The Protectobot medic projected competence as hard as he could. Honest, boss, he could handle the job!

"Hmmph." The senior medic seemed to find whatever he'd been looking for in First Aid's visor. Nodding to himself, he turned away to pick up the list of patients. "Fortunately, this isn't the hardest part of the job. However," he held up a warning finger without looking away from the list, "it is an absolute necessity. Don't let anyone ever tell you differently. Especially SpecOps mechs. They always try to squirm away immediately after medical treatment, and I'm telling you right now, if I find out you're letting them get away with that kind of behavior, I'll remove you from the aftercare roster so fast your **combiner team** will feel my foot up their tailpipes."

First Aid nodded quickly. "Mandatory cuddles. Got it, sir. No skimping on prescriptions."

Ratchet eyed him some more. Just because First Aid was the first medic in a long time he'd name his successor didn't mean he wouldn't screen the ever-loving slag out of him in a big way.

After long enough that a dishonest mech would have started squirming, Ratchet finally relented. "Fine." He forked over the patient list. "The patient has returned from a scouting run that turned into running for his life when Astrotrain ambushed him with a hold full of Stunticons. Repairs are complete, but he needs a polish, a frag, and about an hour of hugging it out - in that order, mind!" he added, wagging a finger.

First Aid saluted. "Sir, yes sir! I'll go get the paint and the handcuffs."

Ratchet nodded in satisfaction. "Good mech." Good medic, too.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	8. Pt 8: Gentle

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 8:** "Gentle" ( _the Deception Way of fragging is so rough that anything more gentle is now the kinkiest of kinks)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

 _"Soundwave and Onslaught_ _"_

* * *

"I always knew you were into the kinky stuff." Vortex laughed as if he wasn't impressed, but Soundwave turned an unreadable gaze on him that said better than words how transparent the 'copter was. Some kinks were unnerving for even an experienced mech, and the social connotations of this particular one made this more of a hush-hush affair than the bragging rights Vortex usually walked out of a frag with. No Decepticon admitted in public to doing this. Slag, not even in private. Vortex had to wonder how the topic had even come up.

Onslaught waited out the nervous laughter. "Well?" he asked, folding his arms.

Vortex glanced between him and Soundwave, then shrugged, trying not to look as rattled as he was. He'd known Onslaught needed his help to set up a fun night for his lover, but he hadn't anticipated…this. And he had to admit that he was a little curious. "Why not? Gotta try the real extreme stuff at least once in my life. I've got a reputation, after all!" He laughed again, heard how nervous he sounded, and stopped as abruptly as he'd started. "Right, yeah, I'm in."

Soundwave didn't move from where he sat at the table, but Onslaught stood and extended a hand. "Then let's begin."

"Yeah, yeah…" He laid his hand in his commander's, hesitating half a second before letting his palm settle flat to Onslaught's. "Just - the door's locked, right?"

Soundwave inclined his head. "Quarters: secure." He relaxed back in his chair, and something low, slow, and cloyingly sweet began to pulse from his speakers. "Your involvement goes no further than the three of us."

That was still plenty for blackmail purposes, but Vortex reflected on how deep the other two would be sunk if this came out. Expose him, and they'd be exposed. Okay. He could do this. Mustering his courage, he stepped in toward Onslaught just as Onslaught took a step toward him.

Their legs immediately tangled, knees bumping into each other and feet tripping. Vortex's free hand shot up, aiming for his opponent's visor - er, wait. This wasn't sparring. "Oops, uh, sorry, hold on."

"It's fine." Onslaught politely ignored the fist that had nearly smashed him in the face, and Vortex awkwardly let it drop as they stepped on each other's feet trying to unknot their legs. Once they were back to neutral, Onslaught nodded. He lifted Vortex's captured hand into some sort of stylized pose, bent at the elbow. "Good. Now, left foot forward as I step back with my right." He pulled gently, and Vortex reluctantly followed his lead, free hand hovering above Onslaught's other arm as it wrapped around his waist. "Put your hand on my upper arm. Like that. Slide forward and rock back. Good. Right foot back as I step forward with my left."

Since he had no idea how this was supposed to feel, it felt absolutely wrong. "Am I doing it right?"

"You're too stiff. Relax. Lean against me," Onslaught instructed, gently pulling him forward into what all of Vortex's battle-honed instincts screamed was a clinch. "Let me guide you."

The arm around his waist eased upward, palm pressed to the center of his back to cradle just under his rotor hub, and Vortex stiffened somehow further. Proximity sensors blared danger. Red alarm lights peppered Vortex's HUD. His opponent was going for his rotor hub! He was going to grip and tear and pull him apart, holding him helpless!

Vortex cycled a deep vent and deliberately disabled his combat protocols. One by one, he deactivated the proximity sensors blinking urgent warning. An embrace. This was an embrace, and the gentle rocking slide of their feet, back and forth, around and around, was a dance. A slow dance where Onslaught guided him in slow circles around the room, Vortex's helm resting against his shoulder and their hands laced together. It made his back crawl where Onslaught's hand pressed into his back, holding him close. His rotors twitched madly, but he was cool. He stayed frosty. He could do this.

This right here was the kinkiest slag he'd ever done, hands down, but c'mon, he was Vortex. He was _known_ for his perversity. He couldn't bolt now without losing face.

Besides, cooperation bought him points with Soundwave. A Decepticon never lost the chance to do that. Onslaught led him through another turn, and Vortex snuck a glance at their observer. Figured that the guy was a voyeur.

"Loosen up," Onslaught murmured into his audio, and Vortex tried not to shudder too obviously.

Soundwave stayed at the table, visor a smoky red, and the music crooned a slow rhythm for the two Combaticons dancing for him.

* * *

 _"Soundwave and Tarn_ _"_

* * *

For a while, Soundwave didn't even realize Tarn was interested. There were no grenades, no fistfights, no screamed arguments, no obscene gifts. There wasn't even a noticeable leer. Instead, there were gentle words, soft touches, and flirting so subtle it could have been missed if a mech didn't pay attention.

Genteel manners were so foreign to most Decepticons that their use became a parody. Tarn often used high-class mannerisms as a weapon, but it didn't ring true when he turned that same politeness on Soundwave. Tarn wasn't the type to insult coyly.

It was so strange that Soundwave assumed Megatron's newly deemed leader of the D.J.D. was actually snubbing him, but that didn't seem right, either. Tarn wouldn't even greet him correctly, which confused him. The tankformer had an odd habit of greeting him via a handshake, refusing the competitive forearm clasp of two Decepticons meeting. The usual test of strength simply didn't happen. The handshake wasn't even a knuckle-breaking handclasp!

The first time it happened, Soundwave had assumed it was one of Tarn's eccentric pretensions like his singing, twisting a harmless gesture into something far more dangerous. He'd expected a few popped joints as Tarn's hand slid down his forearm to take his hand, but all that happened was a brush of Tarn's thumb across the back of his hand, a short, firm squeeze, and that was it. Soundwave had been left blinking.

These incidents kept happening: solicitous inquiries into his health and mood, off-duty invitations that didn't seem professional but weren't blunt questions about his interface preferences, the small, careful touches to his shoulders, arms, and especially his hands. Tarn took every opportunity he could to touch Soundwave's hands.

Soundwave pored over the evidence and concluded the mech was…courting him. A bizarre courtship, hardly Decepticon at all, but a courtship nonetheless. It was the polar opposite of the loudly announced intention to frag common among the rank and file, declared in great detail in the middle of the barracks for all to hear. This wasn't that. This was a shadow courtship. It was a courtship done in plain sight, unrecognized by those who didn't know about it. Tarn sent signals only Soundwave could pick up.

He decided he liked it.

* * *

 _"Octane and Sandstorm_ _"_

* * *

Octane was used to running with the big 'bots. He was a Decepticon triple-changer, for Primus' sake!

So why did he feel like he was sneaking around hoping not to get caught?

"How do you even find places like this? I thought people closed down these places." Although that might just be a Decepticon thing. Maybe. It sure seemed like it ought to be illegal, anyway. Octane checked over his shoulder and sidled a little further into the shelter of the doorway. He wasn't _scared_ , but he certainly didn't want anyone to see him here. It was indecent.

Sandstorm, calm as anything, simply knocked on the door. "You have to sign a waiver."

Oh, a damage waiver. He knew about those. "A no retaliation kind of deal?" What happened at the club stayed in the club. He could understand that.

"A waiver saying you're willing to abide by the rules. You have to leave the violence at the door and sit quietly. No comm calls, no loud conversation, no fragging." Sandstorm gave him a scolding type look. It was the type of look that said Octane wasn't doing the kink right. He was clawing instead of caressing, or throwing Sandstorm around instead of just pressing him back against the wall.

Look, he wasn't used to this 'date night' stuff. Learning how to do it right was _difficult._

Octane threw another nervous glance over his shoulder. If Reflector staked out this place for blackmail purposes, he was screwed. He'd pay out the valves to keep this secret. "Rules. Uh. Okay. Rules for…sitting? Sounds like a boring club." Bravado, sheer bravado. This was the most risqué date he'd ever been on.

And Sandstone acted as though this was just another Friday night. "It's a private theater, not a club. They show movies."

"Are they good movies?"

"They're good movies to sit through."

"Sounds boring," he repeated, but then the door was opening, and holy fuel tanks, where did they dig that bouncer up from, a decommissioned Guardian program?

Octane signed the waiver thrust into his face out of sheer intimidation from having somebody that size and weight class standing over him. He stayed silent until they were past the bouncer, exhaling a huge breath of stale air only once it was safe. "Oooookay. Now that I've signed away my spark, where's this good time you promised me?"

"Just gotta find a free couch." Sandstorm craned his neck. "You see one?"

"Uh." He had been trying _not_ to look.

Secondhand embarrassment flushed heat through him, but he forced himself to look at the crowd. It was obscene how people were openly pressed together, here. Various appendages were twined together all over the place, heads resting on shoulders and limbs wrapped snugly around bodies without a hint of attempted chokeholds or grappling for a pressure point. There were even other Cybertronians here, the familiar metal bodies of his own species twice as pornographic to see as any of the aliens in the room. Octane swallowed hard, optics sliding away and back again. He didn't recognize any of the couples - quad, on that one couch - but they were all unashamedly cozied up against one another, kibble interlocked and optics dimmed as they watched the movie up on the wall.

What sort of movie was that, anyway? Nothing was blowing up. It was weird.

Octane felt a little squirmy inside, unable to look at the crowd or the movie. He shifted from foot to foot, shrugging. "I don't see anything open, so we should probably go - "

"Oh, there. C'mon." Sandstorm had him by the arm in half a second, dragging him down the row to a decent-sized couch. Not that it mattered how big it was, since he immediately pushed Octane down into the corner and cuddled up against him, squeezed in as tight as possible.

Octane froze. Sandstorm's helm up nudged up underneath his chin, hands curled against his chest, and Octane had no idea how to deal with that. No idea. Sandstorm was all warm and purring and snuggly, and it turned the squirmy feeling inside him into a writhing heat that felt vaguely erotic but mostly just…nice. This felt nice. It was a soothing kind of relaxed bliss that he'd never felt before, but Octane thought he could get used to it.

Maybe the movie wasn't so bad, he decided as he brought his arm up around Sandstorm's shoulders.

* * *

 _"Blitzwing and Astrotrain attempt an "intervention" for Octane over that Autobot he keeps meeting up with_ _"_

* * *

"You're going to get your aft executed, 'sall I'm saying." Astrotrain sat forward enough to grab another glittering cube of badly distilled high grade. One of the perks of being buddies with Octane was a nigh-infinite store of energon. Didn't do squat for their brewing ability, but having raw materials made up for a lot of failures. He tossed back the cube as fast as possible and came back up for air gasping. "Just - just saying we don't wanna get called to an assembly some day and find it's your execution. He'd do it, too!" He pointed a finger at his pal. "Galvatron would make us watch. He always likes t' make an 'xample of traitors."

Octane sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, I get that. I really do. It's just, y'know." He shrugged uncomfortably. "It's hard to get the itch scratched 'round here, you know what I'm saying? Trypty-baby's large and in charge if I want that, but Sandy's…Sandy's different." He looked away.

Blitzwing was right there to scowl in his face. "Yeah? Yeah?! Different how? 'Cause it's gonna get you shot if you get caught, and don't think we ain't thought 'bout turning you in!" It was an empty threat. He was reaching for his share of Octane's tanks even as he spoke.

"Look. Look, it's. It's hard to explain?" Octane turned his palms up, looking at them in helpless appeal. This was so far outside the realm of Decepticon experience they didn't evenhave the vocabulary to explain it. "He holds me. I mean, who does that around here? We don't do that. He just holds me, and doesn't dent me, and doesn't scratch my paint, and doesn't dislocate my hips fragging me. It's really…" His voice went high-pitched and a little sickly, as though he expected them to be totally disgusted. "Sweet?"

Blitzwing and Astrotrain exchanged resigned looks. It really did look like an intervention was needed. Primus alive, the things they did for access to lousy high-grade.

"You don't need to keep going to an Autobot for that slag," Blitzwing proclaimed loudly. "If you, uh, need, uh, I, we can, uh." He rolled his shoulders back, straightening on his seat and tossing back his drink for courage. "Hug."

Octane stared at him.

Astrotrain reset his vocalizer. "Yeah, that. It can't be that hard, right?"

Octane stared at him, too. "You'd do that...for me?"

Oh, rust, tell them he wasn't going to get all mushy on them. Both shuttleformers coughed, throats tight, and hemmed and hawed for a minute in their most blustering macho tones. Octane kept gaping at them.

Finally scraping up the courage to get on with it, Blitzwing kicked the table back from the couch so he could shift over toward his pal. "Frag, mech, you're gonna get yourself shot! It's just 'facing. And, uh, stuff. Just don't bring it up to anybody," he added hastily.

Octane mimed zipping his lips. "My vocalizer's locked down."

"Then, uhhhhh." He glanced over at Astrotrain, visor silently pleading for help. Astrotrain looked petrified by indecision, however, which was less than helpful. Well, slag. How exactly did cuddling work? It wasn't like collapsing after a heavy frag. That was more of a coma as self-repair kicked in. Blitzwing hesitated, then opened his arms to Octane. "Come…over here?"

Octane scooted over eagerly. Blitzwing suddenly had his arms full of fuel tanker, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Astrotrain seemed no more certain of what he was doing as he scooted over to lean against Octane's other side. "Riiiiiight. Okay. Let's get this cargo into orbit. You just," he pushed gingerly against the Octane, getting him to lean more onto Blitzwing, "do that, and I'll, er, I'll do this." He twitched and fidgeted into place, wings and arms in the way as the three of them attempted to settle into some semblance of close contact that didn't involve pointy bits digging into armor seams. They ended up hoisting Octane practically into Blitzwing's lap.

Octane seemed to like it, if the whirring hum of his fans kicking in was any indication. "Can I put my arm up around you?" he asked hopefully.

Blitzwing grimaced. "Ugh. Okay." That laid Octane practically on top of him, chest turned to press against him and other arm wrapping securely over him in what was definitely a hug. Blitzwing understood what it was in an intellectual way, but he didn't get the _point_ of it. Octane wasn't wrestling him down to frag or attempting to disable him. It was just a hold. Embraces like this had no end goal. It was a gesture without cause, or maybe it meant something that Blitzwing didn't understand.

To him, it didn't seem to progress anywhere. Like, he got making out. A few punches here, heavy groping there, and everything escalated to enthusiastic clanging that ruined the rec room furniture one popped rivet at a time. This hugging thing didn't go anywhere, and he didn't get it.

It was very, very weird.

Octane hummed some more, fans turned up so high he vibrated. When Blitzwing pulled his head back far enough to see the helm pressed underneath his chin, the expression of quiet contentment on the guy's face was the most bizarre thing he'd ever seen.

Astrotrain, relegated to Octane's back, apparently decided snuggling was boring. Which is was, but he could actually move around some. Blitzwing envied him that. "Gonna try this thing I heard about," the lucky fragger mumbled, and he sat up a bit to put his hands on Octane's wings. Metal immediately began to squeal.

Octane flinched. "What're you trying to do?" he asked without otherwise moving.

Blitzwing could see Astrotrain's hands peeling long curls of paint off Octane's back, scratching through to the metal underneath. See, that looked like an activity he could get behind. Who didn't like some catscratches from a good roll in the bunk?

"It's supposed to be a massage," Astrotrain said proudly as he kneaded large dents into the joints where Octane's wings met his back. "Saw it in a vidshow once."

"Uh-huh." Octane kept flinching. "Maybe you could lighten up some?"

What, seriously? Astrotrain and Blitzwing exchanged a completely weirded-out look. "But you won't hardly feel it," Astrotrain protested.

"Kinda the point."

"Uh, okay." Face twisted up in incredulous disbelief, Astrotrain made an effort to stop scratching through the paint. "Like this?"

"Mmmm." Octane melted. There was no other word for it.

Blitzwing blinked down at him in shock as the mech slumped against him, all but purring as his fans burred away in loud arousal. Someone who sounded like that should not - he repeated: not - look like that! Lust meant tension! Combat! A swift punch at an attractive mech, and if it was a knock-out, then score! As soon as the defeated mech regained consciousness, time for a wrestling match to see who topped once they were in the bunk, and maybe a second round if the guy was clever and saved his energy to take over once the first round was done. Not this unnatural relaxing. Relaxing and fragging didn't fit together in his mind at all, and when he looked at Astrotrain, he could see his friend was just as unsettled. He had no idea how they were going to get all the way through this, much less how they'd do it again.

But if it kept Octane from running off to get his fix from the stupid Autobot, a Decepticon had to do what a Decepticon had to do.

Blitzwing reluctantly took one of Octane's hands in his own and - gently, he had to remember gently - began to rub it. Octane made a sound like he was about to overload.

The two Decepticons working him over exchanged another look. _Such_ a strange kink.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	9. Pt 9: TicklingTicklish

**[* * * * *]**

 **Pt. 9:** " _Tickling/Ticklish_ "

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

 _Motormaster_

* * *

Getting Motormaster to giggle had become a base hobby sometime around the time everyone realized he wasn't enraged by them trying.

It had been the material of dares up until that point. Tickle the dangerous Stunticon! Get him to snigger and win a bet! Except he seemed to find random Decepticons ambushing him with wriggling fingers more of a weird Earth hazard rather than anything worth starting a fight over, so the thrill of outrunning a threat didn't happen. Which was, no lie, kind of disappointing. People poked dangerous mechs for the rush, after all.

All of the other Stunticons were low-slung in altmode and broke into peals of laughter when driving offroad through grass - unsettling the first time Dead End did it and a hilarious highlight of going through wheat fields in Kansas forever after - but Motormaster's altmode sat a decent distance off the ground. As if to compensate, he was terribly ticklish at the knee joints while in root mode. The discovery had seemed awesome at the time, but the lack of retaliation almost stopped the tickle ambushes entirely. He didn't do more than swat at his ticklers.

But the Decepticons were as prone to lame memes as anyone on Earth. Planking had been banned by Megatron early on after Starscream ended up balanced on his throne in altmode, and Soundwave won the mannequin challenge without even being aware he was involved in the bridge-wide competition. Tickling Motormaster out of nowhere became the latest base hobby through the same kind of boredom-provoked viral fad.

It, too, would have died out fairly quickly if the Autobot SpecOps team hadn't somehow transmitted the meme over to the Autobots. Now there was a cross-factional competition over who could get Motormaster to giggle under the most inappropriate circumstances possible, and people were going to absurd lengths.

Once Vortex found out tickling Motormaster mid-interface turned a good frag into a spectacular one, well, things spiraled out of control. That meme went _interesting_ places after that, most of which seemed to involve Prowl and Ironhide finding creative ways to prevent Optimus Prime from giving it a go while Jazz and Wheeljack did their best to enable their boss' competitive streak.

* * *

 _"Prowl_ _"_

* * *

"Stop that."

Mm, nope.

Prowl refused to give up his spot on the common room couch even as light fingers danced over the back of his knee joint. He just turned his head enough to glower over a lowered door. "Desist."

Not happening. Tickle tickle.

"Cease."

More fingers wriggled into the other knee joint. Prowl twitched, blinking rapidly, but aside from a full-body flinch, he didn't move from lying on his front over the entirety of the couch. If the Code-less wild of the Autobot common room were to be believed, first-come first-served rules dictated he now owned whatever he laid claim to, even if he chose to hog the furniture. This couch was _his_.

The rules said nothing about tormenting him until he scooted over, as he was now finding out. "Would you please cut it out?" he asked, somehow managing polite request and annoyance in one short demand.

Which was denied. Tickling would continue until compliance resulted. Share the couch, Datsun.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	10. Pt 10: Distraction Sex

**[* * * * *]**

 _Pt. 10: Distraction sex / "First time"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

This was a horrible idea on an epic scale, and Swindle gave Swerve a glare even as the bartender pushed him toward the front. "Why can't I just stay back here?"

"My back room isn't as big as Blurr's, that's why," Swerve said, and Swindle did kind of have to concede the point there. Swerve's bar wasn't that much different in size compared to the Old Oil House, but the back area was a narrow strip crammed in behind the engex canisters. After three weeks of the talkative bartender either tripping over or chatting at him, Swindle felt claustrophobic.

He stifled a pang of something else. Blurr had kept him out of sight of everyone on Cybertron for weeks, hiding him in the Old Oil House's back room. Calling in a favor from a rabid fan had been a frantic bid to get him away before Starscream or the angry mob of Camiens caught up, and it seemed to have worked, but Swindle found he rather missed spending the early hours of the morning slowly cleaning alongside Blurr. He hadn't expected to miss the racer so much.

Still, best not to look a gift equinoid in the mouth. Starscream had really done a number on Swindle, and it wasn't as though any medic could be trusted to treat him without tattling. Self-repair was slow as anything, but it was reliable. Given time, he'd recover. In the meantime, he stayed in the back rooms of sympathetic bars, relying on the kindness of bartenders.

Which explained why he peered warily out the door into the main bar as if someone were waiting to assassinate him. The back rooms were safe; he wasn't so sure about the main bar. "You're not even closed."

"So? Nobody comes into the bar this time of day."

"Jinx," Swindle muttered as he ventured out into the area behind the bar. This was…relatively safe. He could duck beneath the bar if someone came in.

Swerve clinked around in the back, freed to rearrange things at long last. Having another body back there didn't seem like it should cause such a block, but it seemed like everything he'd needed since Swindle was smuggled aboard was out of reach any time Swerve went looking. "Don't worry so much," he called up front. "I've got a plan if anybody does peek in."

"I'm afraid to ask, but what?" If there was one thing weeks aboard the Lost Light had taught Swindle, it was a suspicion of Swerve's plans. There was a level of ridiculous on this ship that would drive Megatron crazy. Maybe that had been the plan all along.

Swerve emerged triumphant, holding a tray of glasses. He opened his mouth to lay out his grand scheme.

The bar door opened.

Swindle squeaked as the bartender dropped the tray, lunged forward to seize him by the helm, and dragged him into a passionate, groping, tongue-twister of a kiss that started in the Land of Surprise and ended in This Is Going Somewhere.

Okay. Okay, so the talking thing? It translated well. Like, wow. And people said Swindle was the one with a golden tongue!

"Ahem. I, ah. Public Displays of Affection are against - "

"Privately owned business," Swerve mumbled against Swindle's mouth, turning the ex-Decepticon out of direct line-of-sight behind the bulk of his own body.

Not that Ultra Magnus was looking at them, of course. There were walls to be studied intently. Gaping at a couple making out vigorously was beneath him. He reset his vox box gruffly. "I…yes, certainly. However, you are bound by decency laws even within a business, especially one that is a public venue."

Wherever this was going, Swindle strongly felt that it didn't belong in public. Swerve apparently felt the same, as he broke liplock long enough to say something about locking the door on his way out. By the sound of it is that's Ultra Magnus did, but by then Swindle was getting back to business, and what a business it was.

"Good plan," he said later.

"Thanks. I thought so."

"The downside is that now I have glass in my tires."

"…yeah, we should clean that up before he comes back and cites me for a health hazard."

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	11. Pt 11: Might Get Caught

**[* * * * *]**

 _Pt. 11:_ _"_ Semi-private wall sex with high probability of getting caught. _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Nobody woke up one day thinking, "Today I will interface with a wall." That just wasn't natural.

Ultra Magnus had it written on his schedule as 'Interface Metroplex,' and it wasn't the first thing he thought about when he woke up. It _had_ been the last thing he'd thought about before recharge, and his memory refluxes had been vivid recollections of past city maintenance days. For some reason, he couldn't clearly remember upon waking if First Aid really had been involved in a threesome with them last time. He was fairly certain the medic hadn't been there. The idea had certainly been appealing enough to imagine in detail, however.

Thus, his first thought upon waking was, "Should I invite him to join us?" That was a far more natural thing to wake up thinking, surely.

Anyway, interfacing with Metroplex was one of Ultra Magnus' duties as city commander. It usually went off without a hitch and was quite enjoyable, thus why he thought about extending an invitation to First Aid. Variety was the spice of life, wasn't that how the saying went?

Due to Decepticon interference, any and all additional seasonings were tabled as soon as Ultra Magnus entered his office. Today didn't look to be so simple as a retreat to the cityformer's core.

"Attention Autobots," he said through the PA system. "We are at high alert. Potential Decepticon activity has been sighted to the south of us. I repeat: possible Decepticon attack, Autobots on high alert." He cut the microphone and frowned at his desk. Waiting for the Decepticons to make their move wore at his nerves, but defense was a vital part of a city commander's duty. When he'd headed a unit, he'd been much more involved in the Autobot offensive movements. Sitting here as a target felt wrong.

Still. He would never abandon Metroplex, and Metroplex was a city. Cities didn't move easily, which was what made them targets. Strong defenses made them less so, so defense it would be.

Pushing back from the desk, Ultra Magnus stood abruptly in order to head down to the medbay. He could at least make his presence felt inside the city. His charisma was a far cry from Optimus Prime's, but he'd found his mere presence reassured the more nervous of the Autobots.

Halfway to the medbay, Scamper began to tail him. Ultra Magnus turned more than once to direct a querying, "Do you need something?" at the city drone, but Scamper ducked down the nearest cross corridor to stay out of sight until Ultra Magnus continued on. Slammer joined in soon after. At this rate he'd have all three of Metroplex's mobile units following him around with no explanation. Metroplex obviously needed something but didn't want to ask directly for it.

Thinking quickly, Ultra Magnus picked a long stretch of empty hallway to wait them out. Today was enough of a frustration without playing a guessing game. He leaned back against the hallway wall and waited.

After half an hour, Scamper inched down the hall.

"Yes?" Ultra Magnus said once he was within reasonable conversational distance.

The drone inched a bit closer and reached out to a panel near Ultra Magnus' shoulder. It opened to his touch, and he rummaged inside for a moment. Ultra Magnus decided not to move.

Scamper pulled out a handful of jury-rigged cables, the tips nonstandard but useable.

"…oh. I see." Glancing both ways down the hall, the city commander checked the latest report on the Decepticon activity. Nothing had changed. "It **was** on the schedule for today." It seemed he wasn't the only one who'd woke up anticipating city maintenance. And while the Autobots in the city were tense while they waited, only those currently on duty were staying in their assigned areas. The chance of being interrupted by a Decepticon attack was much lower than someone walking into the middle of one of Ultra Magnus' duties.

Acceptable risk, Ultra Magnus decided. And perhaps it added a bit of spice to the whole affair.

Scamper lit up, smiling as he handed over the cables.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	12. Pt 12: Don't Get Caught

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 12:_** "don't get caught _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

When licking Jazz open in a quiet corner of the base, two things to keep in mind:

1\. Deep the slurping down. Sound effects were nice and Jazz had an oral fixation a kilometer wide, but slobbering all over left more evidence behind than ideal. Clandestine meetings were meant to be secret. That required silence and discretion. Unfortunately…

2\. Jazz liked to get caught.

So if you happen to be on your knees in a quiet corner of the base, face brazenly nuzzled between coaxed-open chestplates and tongue busy on a hot spark chamber, don't be surprised if someone clears their throat pointedly behind you. Remembering #1 didn't mean #2 hadn't called in backup. Just pull your head out of Jazz's chest, look appropriately ashamed of yourself, and resume activities after the lecture finishes. Don't worry. Jazz will only get hotter for the wait.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	13. Pt 13: Getting Caught

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 13:_** _"Getting caught_ _"_ (Datsun cuddling)

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

In all honesty, it started out innocent. Not completely without intent, but the intent was flirting, not full-out naughty touch. They were in the common room, after all, under the watchful lenses of the surveillance cameras. Snuggled together watching horrible late-night MTV was a weekly tradition for them, and while most of the Autobots were either pulling third shift or tucked away recharging in their rooms, the common room was still a public area. Snuggling was as far as PDAs got on Red Alert's watch.

So Smokescreen seriously didn't intend for the gesture to be anything more than suggestive. As in, suggesting they move this elsewhere. He had his arm comfortably around Prowl, tucked between beanbag and Prowl's back, and he had just enough wiggle room to reach his fingers up to trace around the rim of one headlight.

Prowl's optics flickered rapidly.

Smokescreen blinked himself as a loud rev came from the engine so close at hand. Smirking, he repeated the move, whispering the very tip of his middle finger across the tiny divot where glass set into metal.

Prowl stiffened, doors popping up, but his face held the gambler's attention.

The normal stoic expression had cracked. Teeth buried in his lower lip, Prowl seemed absolutely shocked by his own reaction. He all but trembled as Smokescreen gently traced another scraping, sliding, lingering circle around that one headlight. Prowl's engine revved, suddenly panting in short, quick cycles of acceleration going nowhere. Smokescreen could feel the abrupt change as hot air poured out of wide-open vents, fans on high.

The joining point where different materials in a mech's body slotted together were often sensitive, but this? This was above and beyond finding a ticklish spot or pressure point. Captivated, Smokescreen flattened his finger to drawn the friction pad along the sensitized rim, one gloriously slow petting meant to do exactly what it did: light up Prowl's sensor system like a solar flare, stroking pleasure out of dancing electricity and wakened charge until Prowl melted against his side with a soft groan, helm rolling back and optics dimming to a dusky blue like an evening summer sky when everything slowed, everything drew out, everything was half in mystery and lasted forever in the heat they couldn't escape.

How could he possibly resist that?

Smokescreen curled around him, pressing his lips to the red chevron offered to him, and his other hand dropped the remote carelessly off the beanbag. He brought it up to cup Prowl's other headlight, the thumb rubbing around the rim as he pressed kiss after kiss down the lower edge of Prowl's chevron, aiming down, heading for -

The PDA alarm blared like no tomorrow.

When they peeled themselves off the ceiling, Smokescreen couldn't stop laughing. Prowl muttered something that shouldn't be repeated and stalked from the room, intent on murdering a certain Security Director.

Another normal night in Autobot HQ.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	14. Pt 14: Exhibitionism

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 14:_** _"exhibitionism_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Circuit boosters sort of shot-putted a mech's sense of modesty, Fulcrum found out firsthand.

"I'm going to frag someone, right here and now!" Misfire crowed in the middle of a crowded corridor in a space station halfway to nowhere, and Krok facepalmed in a manner so expressive everybody who saw him knew this was not the first time he'd dealt with this particular steaming pile of slag. There were plenty of people looking, many of them suddenly interested in the ragtag group of Decepticons in their midst.

Crankcase had the gall to actually look bored.

Spinister just shrugged when Fulcrum looked to him. "That's circuit boosters for you. All the energy of a battalion, and most of the libido of one."

"You!" Fulcrum yipped as Misfire took advantage of his inexperience to snag him around the waist. "Let's get with the interfacing!"

"But we're in a - " Hallway, he wanted to say, but there was a mouth on his that took the word right out of his voxbox.

Misfire kissed the way he talked: noisy, hands everywhere, and never pausing an instant to let his mouth rest. Fulcrum forgot about their audience somewhere around the time Krok resigned himself to acting as a traffic cop redirecting the flow of pedestrians to walk around the two mechs now fragging on the corridor floor.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	15. Pt 15: Worship

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 15:_** _"_ _Worship" (_ Prowl, Soundwave - "There is no war in Ba Sing Se. _"_ _)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"There is nothing outside this room," he was told, and the calm, knowing voice was the only sound. All other noise ceased to register. Cybertron disappeared. There was only this room, and in the silence, the voice. He _listened_ to it with all of his being.

"The door ends your universe." His concerns fell away. The faction symbol on his chest became meaningless. Letting go of duty took effort, and he shuddered as they lifted off his shoulders. Venting hard, he gloried in the floating sensation of freedom. His plating relaxed, tensed cables easing in an almost painful stretch. His life had never been so simple, and he was grateful for it.

The voice spoke on, no longer guiding him through cutting his ties but instead building something new in their place. "We are the only ones who matter, here."

"The floor is your ground."

"The ceiling is your sky."

"The chair is your throne."

"The bed is your altar."

"And I," the only other person in existence said to him, coming to stand over him, "am your god." The ghost of a smile crossed Prowl's face, but it vanished into the impassive facade like the statue of an idol. Stepping back, he opened a hand to invite him closer.

A war raged outside the walls, but a temple could contain all of time and meaning to those who came to worship. Soundwave bent to tender his offering to his god, and Prowl accepted it, and whatever they shared denied reality.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	16. Pt 16: HurtComfort (body worshippraise

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 16:_** _"_ _Hurt/comfort - body worship - praise" (Prowl/Starscream)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You're beautiful," he said, hands careful on damaged appendages. Ankles flexed, the joints cracked where too much weight had stopped too fast, but the sulking mech under his hands didn't protest the careful strokes across pained metal. He took that as an invitation.

He pet sleek metal in long caresses. His hands left warm metal reluctantly, returning to the start to begin again. One stroke after another, he covered the injuries and the areas around them, claiming them as his own simply by presence of being. Nobody else was here, after all. Nobody had come looking. Despite their ranks, despite who they should be to everyone around them, this quiet oasis of isolation remained unwatched by either faction, and he used the time away from time to take handfuls of the forbidden as his own.

"You're beautiful," he repeated, and a scoffing noise answered him, easily ignored. Easily disproven, and eager to be overruled, in his opinion. Too ignored, also in his opinion. Deserving of more attention, by all rights, but he didn't bring it up. He'd rather others continue to push this one aside, because he would be right here to gather him up and lavish care on his injuries.

"Beautiful," he murmured, bending down to kiss the back pointedly turned to him, the vulnerability voluntarily exposed to him, and his hands tightened.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	17. Pt 17: Praise Kink

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 17:_** _"_ _Praise kink_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

 _Megatron/Rodimus_

* * *

It was a stupid little thing. Incredibly stupid. He didn't have an extensive enough vocabulary to express how much of a narcissistic, egocentric, arrogant, self-centered, blind fool Rodimus had to be to make a medal out of his own face. In fact, Megatron had found himself consulting a thesaurus lately in order to properly list the many and varied words for his co-captain's most defining trait, and here he'd thought he knew them all after an entire war of tolerating Starscream.

"Conceited," he mused as he scrolled through synonyms. "That's a good one." 'Vainglorious' sounded too complimentary to his audios, for some reason. Although whenever Rodimus broke out the cloak and went full-on pompous ceremony, it sort of fit. Hmm. He'd keep it in mind, or at least he'd try. Rodimus had a way of driving everything but incoherent, exasperated non-word noises from Megatron's thoughts. Whole geologic eras of cutting Starscream's ego off at the knees through curt, biting remarks he thought up on the spot, and one bratty, self-important, selfish (ooo, another good one) Autobot reduced him to memorizing lists of words.

He looked up as the air glittered. He swore it happened, despite Perceptor eyeing him as though he'd gone mad when he brought it up for potential testing. Sure enough, a moment later Rodimus swanned onto the bridge. It wasn't Megatron's imagination that the place immediately brightened. Red, yellow, and orange reflected quite well, and every reflective surface on the bridge - including Megatron's armor, to his dismay - gleamed Rodimus' colors. It was like an instant charisma bath. Everyone's attention snapped toward the puffed up, boasting-bloated speedster, who took each step as if the brief moments between existed just to pose in.

Rodimus bounded forward before Megatron could stand up, not that Megatron would ever do him that courtesy, and a smirking Autobot face invaded the ex-Decepticon's personal space a second later. "You're reading again!"

"You're a conceited twit," Megatron told him flatly, but Rodimus possessed a unique audio filter that strained out everything but what he wanted to hear when excited.

"I told you what would happen if you kept up your studies!" the overbearing idiot crowed while fumbling around in a hip storage slot. "Mags is really into rewarding people for memorizing the Autobot Code - "

Megatron interrupted in vain, "I'm not reading the Autobot Code."

But Rodimus, of course, rode right over him without listening. " - so! Here you are!" In sudden solemn ceremony, completely contradicted by laughter-dancing optics, the showy braggart presented him with a gold Rodimus Star. "For scholastic excellence."

And Megatron, tongue-tied, glowered as he accepted the blasted thing.

* * *

 _Knock Out/Breakdown_

* * *

"Boss. Boss. Boss!" The urgent whisper became an insistent tug. There were a hundred people in the gallery talking louder and gesticulating more wildly, but it was the contrast of the timid volume against the brawny mech speaking in such a meek voice that caught Knock Out's attention. A mech built like that should not speak with the self-confidence of a glitchmouse.

Knock Out got a better look at the cringing mech and revised his opinion. Given the size of the person he tugged on, a whisper might be as bold as allowed. Knock Out had thought the speaker was a broad mech, but goodness. That was a _truck_ , that was.

"Boss! Motormaster," the whisperer said at low volume, the name loaded with the persistent stubbornness of somebody who wasn't going to give up. " **Motormaster!** "

A knot of customers swirled by right then, and Knock Out was temporarily distracted by the necessity of customer service. Bills didn't wait for cute byplay, after all, and he was paid on commission. Art had to be sold. He wasn't standing here just to be ornamental, although that was certainly one of the reasons he'd been hired. Street fairs brought all kinds to this level of Polyhex, and the art galleries had to compete in every way to lure fresh metal through their doors.

The next time he thought to look, the hulking truck and his cluster of subordinates had left the refreshment tray area. Too bad; that blue mech had been adorably submissive. Knock Out squashed a fleeting sense of disappointment that the free entertainment had left, sighed, and went back to oily sales pitches.

To his surprise, the furtive whisper that had first caught his attention murmured out of the general hubbub again not five minutes later, this time from behind the wire mesh suspending Glasswheel's artwork at Knock Out's back. He blinked, half-turning, then caught himself. "Oh myyy," he chuckled after a minute of listening. No, best not to turn and confront the whisperer. He didn't want to interrupt. The mech had the subtlety of a freight train but the optic of a trained art critic.

" - look at those curves all day, and the color's even better. I didn't even know I liked red but **look** at him! It's such a bright color. It's not crimson. It's not stoplight red. That's ticket-me red. Primus, that's such a turn-on. And look at how his curves make the highlights pure white right at the apex, boss! Reflection, reflection, and then perfect reflected white light. I want to put my hands over every one of those highlights. I want to see what my hands look like on him. I just…I want him. Even just to touch. Please, boss?"

This boss, Motormaster apparently, had an engine to match his size. It made the floor thrum. "He doesn't have a price tag."

"But - "

"Breakdown!" growled low and dark, and Knock Out's optics dimmed appreciatively at Breakdown's immediate silence. Big, broad, and evidently used to taking orders. Add in his very vocal praise of Knock Out's looks, and Knock Out was tempted to slap a number on his aft to start the bidding.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	18. Pt 18: Costuming-Aesthetic Kink

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 18:_** _"Aesthetic/Costume kink" (_ happy Chromedome/Rewind _)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Mmmmmmmm." Squinting, Rewind prodded Chromedome to the side. The larger mech obligingly shifted over. Hands resting on his knees, he sat and watched Rewind think. He didn't really have much input either way in this decision. Rewind was the color and lighting guru, here.

"No," the little mech decided. "The rust-red makes you look sallow."

Chromedome barely knew what that even meant. He nodded anyway. "Okay."

Cloth rustled as tiny hands paged through the stack of sheets in a search for a better color. Actual organic-derived fabric bedsheets were a soft, imported luxury only Senators used to have access to. Now they were a black market item anyone with enough money could buy, and Rewind was determined to find the perfect set for their berth.

Nervous as all Neutrals were nowadays, the proprietor of this little shop hovered at the end of the aisle as if afraid to get any closer. He hadn't seen the camera mounted on the side of Rewind's helm when he'd let them into the shop, but he saw it now. He didn't want to get caught on film. The Autobots closed down black market traders, and the Decepticons did worse.

"We're not going to turn you in," Rewind said without turning around, but there was an irritated note in his voice. "We want exactly what we came here for, nothing more. Do you have any other yellows?"

Nerves made the guy jittery, but Chromedome gave him points for courage despite the shaky hands. He ventured close enough to pull down a hidden upper cabinet. Its latch had been concealed by the overall grubbiness of the place, which made a lot more sense once Chromedome saw how the lines of supposedly random grime disguised the lines of the storage unit. The whole place was marked up that way, now that he knew to look for it. The filth was likely made up of washable grit and grease, then.

"Ahhhh! Now we're talking!" Delighted by the selection, Rewind dug into the new colors. "Domey, come'ere. Sit down." He held up each sheet to Chromedome, admiring the sheen of armor next to woven cloth of different colors and textures. The blue was too dark but made Chromedome's colors warmer. The yellow was too yellow. He faded into those. The lilac was weirdly beautiful. Not pretty, precisely, but Chromedome would certainly stand out against the color dramatically. Good for contrast.

"Are we buying that set?" Chromedome asked after a long period of Rewind holding the sheet behind his arm, standing back, and gazing at him as if contemplating filming something right here and now.

"Maybe. Here, sit on it, will you? I need to see you under me."

Chromedome almost choked on nothing. He didn't think Rewind would film a porno in public, but…

Rewind shoved him down and climbed up to straddle his thighs while the bigger mech was still silently flustered. "Lie back." He might have put some extra force in the foot he set on Chromedome's chest, but his lover went down willingly enough. Rewind leaned over him, camera on. "Hmm. I like that."

"Do you?" Did he sound a bit husky? Yeah. That's about how he felt right now, hands gently curling in the soft fabric beside Rewind's feet.

"That one for sure, but what we really need is, hmm. A dark gold. Do you see a dark gold?" But Rewind didn't look up from his intent gaze downward. "With your arms up over your head - like that. A dark gold would be perfect. Domey, I want to see you **glow**."

Chromedome felt like he already was.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	19. Pt 19: Costume (Necrophilia)

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 19:_** _"_ Costume _" (_ _Necrophilia)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Dedication to the Cause didn't mean stupidity. Loyalty wasn't blind to common sense, despite Lugnut's example.

Sacred as Tarn held the Decepticon badge, the revered purple made for a wonderful target on a world of ice and snow. He painted camouflage over it. A flicker of unease curled through his wires as he did, but combat situations called for adaptive measures. Victory without survival was a triumph, but death by stubborn pride was always inglorious.

He expected Pharma to make a snide remark about the new paintjob, but silence greeted his entrance today. His pet jet stood staring in the dim gloom of the abandoned bunker, entranced. A tablet hung forgotten from the surgeon's fine hands. The screen scrolled unread text.

Grateful for the mask, Tarn darted a look down at himself. What? Did the camouflage make him look that dreadful?

Although it wasn't fear in the good doctor's optics when Tarn looked back to him. The usual arrogance hiding nervousness or impatience from being kept waiting was absent as well. Pharma almost appeared startled, but it was the sudden surprise of a intriguing object falling into his lap. His lips parted slightly as fascination stole his uptight dignity.

"See something you like?" Tarn said to cover his own surprise. Pharma's awe-rounded optics narrowed, shock shifting into a more predatory interest as Tarn walked fully into the room, and answering interest warmed Tarn's systems. The Decepticon readily admitted he liked his Autobot toy more aggressive than intimidated. "Perhaps I should have changed the paintjob back before meeting you."

Wings pricked up as Pharma's shoulders went back. The very idea seemed to offended him, and it came out in an order, hard and strict: a flat, barked, "No! Leave it on."

Tarn blinked, taken aback and sort of liking it.

Pharma didn't care what he liked. The Autobot was already striding forward as though he intended to restrain Tarn himself. His voice, however, dropped to the throaty growl Tarn enjoyed best. Pharma was far more _imaginative_ when actively engaged in these meetings. "Leave it on," Pharma repeated. "It suits you." When he reached out a hand to Tarn, it settled on him as if the surgeon took possession of this unexpected change.

Tarn looked down at the beautiful, talented hand drawing a single elegant finger down his chest. The blue was a stark, blaring contrast against his current muted greys and whites of the camouflage, and it abruptly struck him what else he resembled besides Messatine's snow fields. "Do you have a necrophilia kink I was unaware of?" he said, capturing the wandering hand in his own.

Pharma willingly stepped closer when tugged in. "To see you dead is a kink I never knew I had." He stood on tiptoe to nuzzle that patrician nose under the bleached pale ghost of Tarn's mask. His words breathed hot into the Decepticon's neck. "Be kind. If I'm dreaming, don't wake me."

The dark chuckle of Tarn's response stroked down his back like a corpse's hand.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	20. Pt 20: Doll Transformation

**[* * * * *]**

 _ **Pt. 20:** __"_ Doll transformation. _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The Autobots isolated Sunstreaker. Left him to his own devices. Kept him in their midst but carefully avoided him. It was what he wanted, they assumed. He was far too arrogant to bunk with a partner, too vain to accept another living so close, too moody to not lash out at the slightest provocation. His beauty was legendary, his temper notorious, and they left him alone.

He wondered vaguely why no one ever thought to question how someone famous for his artistry could become so quickly a pariah. Strange, how social stigma worked. Odd, how it never inspired curiosity instead of a fearful look in passing, maybe a shrug and, "What do you expect? He brought it on himself."

Had he really? Nobody seemed to think it imposed instead of natural, an engineered buffer maintained for a purpose. His camouflage never wavered. He cultured an antisocial attitude that actively spurned other people. Sunstreaker lived by himself, and the social isolation disguised his art well.

He lived by himself, but he wasn't alone.

They came to him at night, sneaking through the shadows into his hands, ghosts waiting for resurrection and the living ready to die. Sunstreaker rarely had to open his door for them. He'd turn around and find Jazz sitting at his desk. He'd come out of recharge with Mirage straddling him. Punch brought him online in the medbay by picking up one limp hand, Bumblebee waiting beside the repair berth for him to sit up, and the two of them crowded together to nudge between his knees. No matter how close their skills eased him before he noticed, they always pressed closer. And he, beautiful vain frontliner ready to pound friendly faces into the ground if they looked at him funny, opened his arms to welcome them in.

Sunstreaker the artist, holding his art.

They didn't warn him beforehand or brief him on their missions. Perhaps they didn't even need his help. He didn't ask, and they didn't volunteer answers to unspoken questions. It didn't matter. He didn't need to know what brought him willing subjects, living models that wanted him to do what only he could do. They were the unafraid and in the know, and whatever underlying purpose motivated them wasn't as important as _having_ them.

Art was his reason why and all the causes for how. He did it because he could. It had been his livelihood once, and he missed practicing his skills.

And, yes, there was the practical aspect. He changed them, altered them, and the sheer artistry put into picking them apart and putting them back together in seamless sculptures, character art molded into a complete person - it kept them alive. They didn't always survive, but they lived.

Some of them started out talkative, but the slow, practiced stripping of their colors, their kibble, their parts and pieces stilled their vocalizers. Talking was a distraction, anyway. Sunstreaker didn't respond to chitchat. He took their tongues from them on occasion, but he usually didn't need to. It was the symbolism that silenced their voices. Sunstreaker unmade each and every one of them until they were blank canvases, open space ready for him to start anew, no longer Trailbreaker or Hound or Skids but just a naked protoform he could remake into someone else.

Who depended on his mood, the day, random inspiration, old plans, new thoughts. It depended on what supplies he had on hand. Sometimes it depended on gossip he'd heard in the halls, the number of Autobots in the medbay, or events out on the battlefield. The things he thought he knew, he applied to what these art pieces might have to do. He _made_ them into whatever the Autobots required to win the day, and therein lay his art.

Only Primus could provide a deus ex machina, but gods weren't the only ones who could create a mech.

"You are Barricade," he said as he carved deep furrows into Prowl's facial plating. The lack of pain patches made previously unnoticeable joints in the thin metal buckle, although Prowl moved not a piston, and Sunstreaker followed those joints with an exacto knife, thin lines slipping deeper around Prowl's mouth. Sunstreaker stared hard at the lines as he read into the person this new face belonged to. "You're part of a racing gang. You **run** a racing gang. You got your name from how you get around the Autobot blockades. It's your specialty, and it's why the Decepticons recruited you. You wanted to join them. You're disappointed by the Decepticon leadership and have your own firm beliefs about the Cause that you preach and police. Everyone in your gang still follows you, and they face crippling lectures if they fail you."

He took Prowl's height, much of his mass, and remolded him through welding and carving into someone else. Someone new, but with old history and an entire life story. Barricade, the Decepticon Micromaster Barricade, was a character fabricated wholesale from Sunstreaker's vision, but his creation was a solid, living person that could touch, feel, think, _live._ Blue optics became empty pits as the glass was removed, and Sunstreaker replaced the optic fibers before fitting red glass into the holes. Frown lines bent around a mouth unaccustomed to smiling, and Barricade flexed his face as if feeling it move for the first time. As if exploring expressions the person he'd been hadn't been accustomed to.

It didn't take long for him to adjust. By the time Sunstreaker finished burning the edges of the Decepticon brand into his doors, Barricade was the only one looking out of four red optics at him.

Prowl entered Sunstreaker's quarters unnoticed, and nobody saw Barricade leave.

"Spendthrift," the artist named Mirage, but it wasn't Mirage anymore, and where a noblemech had gracefully submitted to his hands now stood a slender, twitchy clerk with shifty optics and hands that trembled finely like a stimjunkie's. Spendthrift scurried rather than walked, and he spent more time looking over his shoulder in nervous fear than watching where he was going. Sunstreaker stood in the door to his room watching his new creation, gaze heavy on the thin back and meeting overbright optics in warning.

He often watched his art walk away. It didn't always return to him.

Sometimes it did, and nearly killed him in the bargain.

If Sunstreaker wasn't everything he'd been isolated for and more, Meister would have killed him where he recharged. As it was, the Decepticon slipped and slid from the gunblasts in a frustrating way until Sunstreaker finally got him with short sword.

Meister yelped in pain as it pinned his leg to the floor. "I give, I give!" the little mech whimpered, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Don't! Don't!" He cringed behind his hands as Sunstreaker looked him over.

Tattered, worn, in different colors but overall the same mech he'd sent out. Acceptable, if not entirely satisfactory. "You gonna behave?" the Autobot frontliner rumbled, scowling, and there was nothing but destruction in his ferocity.

Meister cringed. "I will, I will."

"Then put your hands up."

Throat cables worked convulsively as the downed mech eyed the cuffs in Sunstreaker's hands. He looked up further, meeting unyielding optics, and Meister knew he didn't have a choice. It was either give in or fight, and he was in no position to fight. "Okay," he whispered, putting his hands up above his head, the backs of his wrists to the floor. "Okay."

This wasn't Sunstreaker's first time prepping someone for deconstruction. Cuffs chained to a ring, locking tight, and Meister looked as though he regretted everything by the time the Autobot took out his tools. After that, it was only a matter of time. Protest as he might, the sting of paint removal and the aching click of parts unbolting didn't stop. Meister writhed and wriggled, screamed and shouted. Eventually, the noise died down to faint whimpers, then silence. The process mesmerized him, a hypnotic ritual with familiar ruthlessness.

Sunstreaker broke him down.

And rebuilt him. Parts assembled according to old, completed blueprints. Components clicked into place following instructions Sunstreaker hadn't written. He copied someone else's workmanship with the exacting care of a master craftsman, so skilled it would take painstaking comparison to the original to discover his forgery. He took Meister apart like a living doll, swapping out hoverboards for wheels, light bars for extra armor paneling, tinted glass windows for clear. He buffed the dark lines under Meister's optics away, deleting the menacing tilt dark shading had added to the sockets. He smoothed plain paint where there had been detail, leaning close enough the steady in and out of his ventilations dried the paint. The shutters closed, refusing him access to the optic glass and color, but he merely chuckled.

Pressing a kiss to the defensive shutters, a moment of affection for his work, Sunstreaker drew back in order to fit blue glass over the optics. His hands stroked the curve of a hood in black and white paint, drawing thin lines of red and blue to detail the center, and wrote a number in someone else's handwriting.

When he stepped back, his creation was gone. All that remained was a ghost reborn, someone who'd been hiding in this isolated room since Sunstreaker had created Meister. The mannequin was once again dressed up in the armor and parts that used to belong to Jazz, and Jazz breathed slowly in and out, head down and visor offline as he came back to life, inhabiting a body once more. He'd hadn't been himself for too long. He'd been living under Sunstreaker's berth among the other discarded people who hadn't come back for their previous identities, shadows thick with ghosts hanging like art on the walls.

Nobody had come looking for them. Nobody suspected they lived here, in the room Sunstreaker didn't share with anyone still among the living.

"Get out," Sunstreaker told Jazz. "It's too crowded in here."

Jazz left. Meister stayed.

Sunstreaker was never alone.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	21. Pt 21: Men in Lingerie

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 21:_** _"_ Men in lingerie _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Tracks noticed as soon as Raoul slid into the driver's seat. "Are you wearing something different?"

Raoul made a noncommittal noise, but his eyes danced with laughter. Yeah, he knew it. His main machine really did pay attention to his ass in the seat. Ha. Okay. _Your move, mech._

The fake leather - although Raoul truly couldn't tell the difference between alien imitation leather and the real stuff - seemed to heat slightly under him. And he wasn't sure, but he thought the seat shifted a bit. Almost a squirm. It made lace ride up his crack, but he stayed still as Tracks shifted gears and pulled smoothly out onto the street.

That was definitely a squirm. Raoul blinked down at the passenger seat, surprised out of his smugness. "You feelin' me up, man?"

"You're wearing something under your jeans! What is it?"

"Yeeeeeeeah, what you **on** , Tracks?" His voice cracked a little, but he managed to keep his shit-eating grin to a puzzled smile. "You ain't never asked if I go commando before..."

The seat _bucked_. "You're not wearing undergarments?!"

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Raoul almost choked on spittle as he burst out laughing. It came out a hoarse cough as spit and gut-busting laughter met halfway. "Christ almighty! Of course I'm wearing something!"

"Oh. I...well." Tracks straightened out of the swerve he'd taken across the center line. Horns honked and fingers waved out windows, but that was practically a polite greeting in New York City. "I. Yes. I apologize. That was - I beg your pardon. What you wear," or don't, "is none of my business."

Raoul grinned to himself and wriggled his bony ass further into the seat, not minding the unfamiliar itch of lace. It was totally worth it for the flustered sputtering. The air vents kept kicking on and off as the Autobot lost control. He figured he could run Tracks in circles for at least another ten minutes before unzipping his fly to show what color the lace was.

He'd have to make sure Tracks was parked before giving him a glimpse, though. Seemed like his main machine forgot how to drive when it came to what Raoul had in his jeans.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	22. Pt 22: Nude People in Gloves and Boots

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 22:_** _"_ People wearing boots and gloves and nothing else. _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Soft singing drifted down the hall.

Fulcrum put his hand over his optics. "That moon was such a bad idea."

"What, was the Duly Appointed Enforcer of a Stick Up Your Aft not enough?" Crankcase muttered, but he was looking kind of uneasy, too. Monoformers, mech. They were so many different kinds of wrong. Getting Krok back together with his Triple-M cronies had set off long-held beliefs, and now the Scavengers had to live with the consequences.

Both mechs twitched a little as Spinister's simple melody broke into a triumphant crow. They knew what that meant.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a naked mech strode down the corridor as if nothing were wrong. Aside from his forearm gauntlets and shin guards, Krok was stripped of armor and bare to the universe. Silvery struts and exposed cables flashed. There wasn't a chance in the Pit he could transform anymore.

Fulcrum refused to move his hand. Crankcase's skeptical expression poorly hid an appreciative once-over.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	23. Pt 23: Leather

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 23:_** _"leather_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Some of the Decepticons adjusted, some didn't. For the xenophobes down in the Decepticon base, it meant that an accidental brush of shoulders in the hall became an hour and a half scalding shower trying to erase the icky feel of alien skin.

The Autobots had far more leather wandering about in their base, so there wasn't as much open recoil from the touch of animal-skin upholstery. They learned to tolerate it, if not love it. They had to. Most of their vehicle modes were luxury models, and luxury upholstery meant leather. There were leather interiors everywhere around them, and when a mech transformed, kibble ended up in the oddest locations.

As among Decepticons, a fraction of the faction hit the other end of the spectrum and started to really _appreciate_ it. The Stunticons were half pariahs and half walking fetishes. They seemed okay with it.

When an Autobot really wanted to rub one out, there were more options available. But there were some frametypes that seemed absolutely built for this particular kink.

Bluestreak was fine with the extra attention. Anyone willing to talk with him during the main event earned additional cuddling afterward. He was the cuddliest Praxian. He loved to be pet on the inside of his doors, leaning back as admirers massaged their hands into the interior panels. He'd drift into a relaxed, purring stand-by mode occasionally interrupted by hiccups of words, half-aware snatches of disconnected thought that were amusing in their complete lack of context.

Smokescreen wouldn't let anyone touch the backside of his doors, but, well, Smokescreen was viciously monogamous and wouldn't tolerate even the _hint_ of flirtation. Everyone kept their hands away.

Prowl was another bag of issues altogether. He was an aloof son of a Honda on duty, but if a mech caught him at the right time in the right place in the right frame of mind after a hard day of dealing with human politicians - well. That was a different matter entirely, and a mech better be ready to dig his hands in and _bruise_ those doors, hard metal fingers pushing indents into the soft leather to leave stress marks and discolored areas where the microcircuitry underneath ruptured, bleeding energon into ugly spots that lingered for days as evidence that somebody had gotten lucky. Prowl liked to _feel_ appreciation, physically _ache_ with the pleasure of a hard frag. There was no cuddling. There were bruises and once an extremely clear imprint of a hand that necessitated Jazz and Ironhide doing a quick dance keeping Prowl's back concealed so human cameras wouldn't focus on it during a very long U.N. summit meeting.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	24. Pt 24: Hand Kink

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 24:_** _"_ Hand kink _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It was an awkward fetish for a mechanoid like him to have. Enjoying hands seemed terribly obvious for someone deprived of them, but that didn't take into account the fact that most people interacted with him via their hands. The lack of his own had been a method of reminding him of his status as a beastformer. Depriving him of thumb digits forced him to depend on others for everyday tasks. Add in that Cassettes were deliberately forged small, and picking him up had been a natural reaction, once upon a more peaceful era. Hands had once been a method of controlling him.

Fortunately, war had ended such liberties. The only people who picked him up now were either idiots or given explicit permission. More of one than the other, as he'd clawed the paint off of most of the total morons by now. The hands which had once controlled him now only touched him at his bidding. _He_ controlled what hands held him.

Which was why the fetish was so awkward. It was a power kink that looked like subjugation from an outside perspective. He couldn't just wander across someone's path and order them to pet him. It would make him a laughingstock.

There was no casual way to indulge.

He settled for never explaining himself.

It was well-know in the Decepticon base that he didn't like to be touched, so those he permitted to lay a hand on him tended to be noticed. Gossip flew. Ravage ignored the whispers and concentrated on having a good time.

Megatron, of course. He was one of Ravage's least puzzling choices. Nobody questioned their leader's right to stroke a hand down Ravage's back, even pet between his audio receivers. And if Ravage seemed to enjoy the attention, it raised no questions. Half the rank and file would purr in bliss if Megatron pet them that way. Ravage honestly doubted anyone picked up on the extra special kind of petting Megatron, amused enough to be benevolent, lavished on him.

Soundwave passed without question as well. He _knew_ none of the other Decepticons caught on to the extent Soundwave detailed him right out in public.

They were more focused on trying to figure out why _Starscream?_ Rumor had it that they two of them hated each other, so why was Ravage occasionally seen perched on the arm of Starscream's chair like an elaborate decoration, optics slitted in pleasure as Starscream absently pet him? Sure, the Air Commander sometimes got fed up with the crackling purr of tape rustling in Ravage's chest and pushed him away, but more often than not he'd be absorbed in whatever he was working on, one hand holding a tablet as the other drummed along the felinoid's back armor.

For that matter, how did Acid Storm gain Ravage's favor but Shockwave earn a disdainful look at any motion toward the felinoid's sleek back? Why Mixmaster and Hook but not Scrapper? It made no _sense._

Then the Combaticons were reactivated, and Ravage threw another scandal into the mix. Ravage, deadly spy and Megatron's favorite, had his optic on Vortex. _Vortex._ Disgraced ex-prisoner, lowest of the low among the Decepticons of Earth. What the frag was up with that?

The mystery puzzled everyone. Vortex himself wasn't entirely sure what he'd done to earn Ravage's inexplicable esteem, but he knew the signs.

It would generally be the third shift, the shift he preferred. It was easier to creep out his targets late in the night. Even the darkness under the ocean grew somehow colder and deeper after midnight, as if the Decepticons sensed the lack of solar energy up on the surface. Vortex liked to be active in the darkness, so he often manipulated the schedule to take third shift.

But sometimes, his plans would be derailed by sudden dense silence around him. He knew what that meant, and the Combaticon had grown resigned to it. He didn't understand, but he didn't have to. When Ravage stalked Vortex, he wanted one thing and one thing only: a lap. Vortex either provided one or suffered the humiliation of having orders come down from above to sit down like some sort of sentient chair for his betters.

So Ravage stalked the resigned 'copter to the nearest comfortable chair, whereupon the Cassette jumped up onto Vortex's unwillingly-supplied lap, kneaded a circle or two, and settled down, attention deflectors on full power. "Pet me," the low growl commanded, and visor staring blankly ahead, Vortex obeyed.

Nobody looked in their direction. Vortex could sit in Megatron's command chair in the middle of second shift; with Ravage's attention deflectors powered up, most mechs wouldn't so much as notice. Vortex struggled to remember the Cassetticon was even there, hands falling idle as his thoughts wandered to more interesting things. Ravage had to bite him once or twice before the hands he wanted returned to running over him.

Hard hands. An interrogator's hands, made to tear and crush as much as prod and poke. Vortex had a great many sensors active in his hands, sensors meant to detect the slightest flux in energy fields when a lie was told, feel the tiny tremors when a mech broke down enough to tell the truth. They were hands designed to do far more than just hold a gun. They were crueler than a warrior's and as finely calibrated as a medic's. The fingers were strong but tapered to delicately curved ends, smooth instead of blunt. Ravage could feel the sensors active underneath thinly armored fingertips, constant pings against his armor as Vortex unconsciously searched for a weakness. Heavier armor rasped against his seams, the top of each fingertip reinforced to dig in, tear, seek out sensitive nerve relays and _pinch_.

He shivered in Vortex's lap and uncurled, letting his armor gap.

It was fortunate Vortex pointedly wanted to avoid paying attention to Ravage's presence. It helped the attention deflectors. With them online, the crinkle of Ravage's tape and the gradual heating of his core temperature went unnoticed. Vortex simply kept petting him, clever interrogator's hands doing his bidding, and they teased him to an inevitable end every time.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	25. Pt 25: Organ Fondling

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 25:_** _"_ Organ fondling _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

There was plating in the way. Everyone had protective hatches, modesty plating for those who never went into combat, armor secured by locked latches for the warriors who reinforced everything vulnerable before heading into battle. Some people decorated their access points (looking at you, Prowl), but for the most part, Cybertronians shut their hotspots and equipment behind heavy metal. It was safer.

Soundwave stiffened as Megatron stopped behind him, one hand resting almost casually on his hip as if it were nothing to touch the communication specialist this way. If it'd been anyone else, Soundwave would have whipped around with glare so cold it'd frost his molester's armor. Since the wandering hand belonged to Megatron, that wasn't an option.

Well, it was, but it wasn't one Soundwave considered. He didn't really want to stop the fingers crawling toward his buttons, anyway.

He locked his knees as Megatron touched the first one, startlingly gentle. Instead of pushing it, Megatron pressed down just enough to rock it in its setting, and Soundwave's knuckles creaked from the grip he kept on the console. Another jiggle, and Megatron moved on, stroking hard between the buttons. The next button was touched in the same gentle manner, exploring and probing without pushing it down. It felt positively indecent nonetheless.

Soundwave's plating was latched down tight, everything safely behind closed panels, but his hips moved in time with Megatron's hand.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	26. Pt 26: Massage Turned Erotic

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 26:_** _"Massage turned erotic_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Of all the duties a medic had, this was one Ratchet actually enjoyed. It wasn't one he often had the time to do anymore, but today? Today he did.

Table set up, he stood back and set his hands on his hips. Scented vials of polish on one end, paint filler on the other, soft cloths as an added luxury many of the Autobots had become addicted to since waking up on Earth. Ratchet nodded to himself, satisfied, and sent out a ping to the ship network announcing his open schedule, appointments available immediately.

A moment of stillness gripped the base.

Reservation requests poured in. Ratchet opened his inbox and was nearly buried in them. He confirmed the first appointment as fast as he could hit Reply.

There was a minute of silence, then an undignified _screeeeech_ of a speeding vehicle braking to a halt right outside the medbay doors. Prowl, of course, showed none of his rush to arrive when he walked through the door and nodded politely to Ratchet. "Thank you for taking the time to do this. It's much appreciated."

Ratchet cocked an optic ridge at him. "And much needed, I can see. Lie down." He gestured at the prepared table.

Prowl obeyed at a speed just slow enough that he could claim he wasn't hurrying if Ratchet said something.

Ratchet didn't say anything. Ratchet dipped an absorbent cloth into the pot of simmering water waiting at the tableside, waiting for it to soak up hot water before draping it over Prowl's lower left leg, from the back of the knee all the way down to the tip of his foot. Air stuttered as fans hitched, but Prowl was too controlled to gasp. He merely turned his head to see what Ratchet was doing right as the medic soaked another towel. Ratchet draped this one over his other leg.

By the time Ratchet finished with the hot cloths, Prowl was smothered in hot, clinging fabric. His fans labored to disperse the heat. He stayed still, obviously trusting Ratchet's methods, but he radiated confusion from under the wet towels.

Ratchet rubbed him vigorously through the towels. Anyone watching might have mistaken it for a rough wrestle, the medic really putting his back and shoulders into scrubbing damp cloth across hot metal like a person doing laundry the old fashioned way. Prowl made several startled noises throughout, especially as he was pushed up onto his sides under particularly fierce shoves, but Ratchet didn't relent. Strong surgeon's hands dug into the wet towels, thumbs digging rhythmic circles at the base of Prowl's doors, the backs of his shoulders, the open gap exposing the back of Prowl's knee joints. He kneaded cloth-covered rubber tires, rocking them back and forth as he pushes his fingertips into the treads. Using the flat of his hands, he scrubbed flat roof panels and door windows hiding under the towels.

Ten minutes later, Ratchet took the towels off, leaving clean armor in their wake. Plus a mech massaged into limp compliance as much by astonishment as by heat and rhythmic touch.

Then came the cool polish, slowly gliding over heated metal in long strokes, and Prowl groaned softly as the last tense cable in his body finally relaxed, letting him sprawl in a limp puddle of Praxian. The cool-down was bliss, his fans spinning to a stop and his ventilation system falling into a standby pattern. Breathe in through three circled rubbed down his back, hold for three more, breathe out just as slow. He practically dozed.

Ratchet smiled a bit as the pattern lapsed when he pushed Prowl's knees apart to get at his inner thighs. Well. The point of a massage was to clean and polish a mech while cycling his systems from hot to near-recharge cool, the most comfortable state for a mechanical being, but it didn't look like Prowl was going to stay relaxed through this. What a pity. Tsk tsk. Ratchet would just have to make the best of things.

Prowl moaned faintly. Ratchet drizzled a light oil across his thighs and bent to rubbing it in.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	27. Pt 27: Touch Starvation

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 27:_** _"_ Touch starvation _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The other Autobots wouldn't touch him.

Well, to be fair, Powerglide didn't want them touching him. He was unbeatable, untouchable, the master of the skies. Even the Aerialbots couldn't outdo him. They had him outnumbered, but sometimes he had to remind the newbies he'd been holding his own against the Decepticon flight advantage _by himself_ for millions of years before their arrival. They have numbers on their side, not skill. One to one, he outflew them.

"Yeah? You think you got what it takes to take us **all** on?" Slingshot said, elbow up on Fireflight's shoulder. The usual sneering arrogance was tempered by something Powerglide's innate sense of superiority didn't allow him to recognize until much later. He was so used to being mocked by the groundframes surrounding him that hidden admiration just didn't register.

Slingshot had been _hitting_ on him. And Fireflight had been jittering under the other jet's arm, wide optics tentatively hopeful as the bold Aerialbot made the poor excuse for a pass at the older, more experienced Autobot flyer. That had been an offer to show off skills in the berth!

Powerglide fumbled his landing when it finally hit him what he'd missed. He'd been transforming, ready to land feet-first, but surprise tripped him up until he almost took a header off the other side of the short landing strip paving the top of this city high-rise. He caught himself, of course, but it was a close call.

For a moment, he thought about turning around. Launching. Going back to take the newbie jets on. He didn't like their attitude any more than he liked the other Autobots', but his own caustic charms drove off most other offers.

Most, but not all. Powerglide turned his attention to the elevator doors as the arrival chime sounded. Better the bird in hand, he decided quickly as he knelt before the short human who bustled out onto the windswept building top.

"Powerglide! Omigosh, omigosh, I've gotta tell you the news, did you **see** Wells Fargo turned down my loan request? I'm going to rip that stuffed shirt a new asshole if he loses me this deal, swear to **God** \- "

He shuddered as thin fingers reached for his plating, and a second of self-reflection made it past the barrier of his ego. This was why he wouldn't go back. It wasn't the Aerialbots' lack of appreciation. It wasn't the other Autobots and their ground-kissing ways.

It was the touch of fragile human fingertips on his plating, the first touch he'd felt in so long, as addicting as it was pleasurable. Humans were so small, so fleshy, but they generated electric currents. Tiny pulses of electricity caressed his circuitry in fluttery beats as her heart, her brain, her skin closed in on him. The smears of oil from her hands were worth every moment of her touch, and fortunately, she thought gifts of metal flattering. He gave her raw ingots, things he found or bargained with Beachcomber for, and she took them to jewelers. She wore rings of titanium and platinum, her ring fingers featuring simple bands studded by metal taken from meteorites. Her fingertips were dusted in gold, some days, iron others. Today she wore the rarest and most precious: flecks of Cybertonium ground carefully and painfully from Powerglide's own substructure.

It turned the faint electric signals from her body into a blaring charge that lit him up from within.

"I don't care about your fragging business," he snapped at the woman even as he sat down so she could climb up onto his thigh, cuddled close to his warm metal and held safe against the chill of the wind. He curled a hand around her despite his glaring. "Why don't you wear sensible clothes? It's always pink and lace with you!"

She looked up at him with moist eyes and smiling, red-painted lips. "It's for you."

He looked away. "Idiot."

Maybe it wasn't surprising he missed Slingshot's pass the first time. It'd taken him years to realize humans didn't wear filmy nightgowns and jewelry on anything but intimate dates. It took him very little time after that to figure out that removing the nightgowns exposed more skin to his metal, encouraged her to touch him more, and Astoria was obviously getting just as much from him as he was getting from her. He wasn't sure what, but he didn't care enough to ask, either.

He simply came to this rooftop week after week, circuitry yearning for the touch he was denied, and she supplied it to him.

Metal-dusted fingernails traced lines of burning fire across his plating, and Powerglide pulled her a bit closer in response. She painted herself in him, for him, and Powerglide would kill anyone or anything that took her dainty hands away.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	28. Pt 28: Sensory Deprivation

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 28:_** _"Sensory deprivation_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Shield is holding at 90%; slight radiation leak on the lower holding area. Note: replace the fuses on the shield generator in three day cycles from now on. They're burning out faster than anticipated, but we made our initial estimates based on output from an underfueled generator. Now that the subject is well-fueled and emotionally stable, the radiation spikes have settled to a regular baseline. Increases and decreases are incidental and pass relatively quickly. If this pattern continues, overall pressure on the shield will even out."

Wheeljack cut the microphone and turned his attention to the subject in question, sighing at the happy optics that beamed out from behind the shield. "You're not supposed to find this a turn-on, you know," he said in a conversational tone of voice. Sunstorm couldn't hear or see him, but that didn't stop Wheeljack from talking to him. It helped remind the engineer that the point of all this was to restrain a person, not a thing.

A person who made a wordless crooning noise as Wheeljack worked on machinery keeping him contained. Inside the suspension cradle, Sunstorm fanned brilliant yellow wings back and melted a bit more into the full-body restraint holding him helpless. His systems hiccupped, radiation spiking for a moment before he settled back down into humming arousal.

Wheeljack would have felt bad about keeping him riled up this way except Sunstorm was quite clearly having the time of his _life_. At this rate, the Autobots were a little bit afraid of how he'd react if he was freed - because he didn't want to be!

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	29. Pt 29: Chastity

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 29:_** _"_ Chastity _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Grimacing and squirming didn't free him of the lock on his chest. It wasn't large, but it felt bigger than it was, sitting squat and cold where his plating should split apart. That was no longer an option he had. Ultra Magnus had ensured the youngest Autobot wouldn't be smearing the purity of their faction's reputation by jumping in and out of mechs' beds.

Ratchet had shared an exasperated look with Wheeljack for that statement behind their defacto leader's back, but they raised no objection. Both Wrecker and medic were of the opinion that Smokescreen could use some restraint. This was a rather literal interpretation of that opinion, but oh well. Better this than nothing.

"It itches," Smokescreen muttered after Ratchet installed the lock. Rubbing at it with the heel of his hand, he swung his legs over the edge of the medical berth while indulging in a full-body sulk as only he could.

"You'll get used to it," Ratchet told him.

"It itches!"

"So scratch it," Wheeljack told him later after pulling him aside. The Wrecker cast a quick look around for any watchers, then leaned in and traced a surprisingly delicate circle around the lock.

Smokescreen inhaled sharp enough to be a gasp as irritated sensors flashed in sudden relief.

"Oh."

Wheeljack grinned. "Yeah."

Smokescreen stopped grimacing about the lock soon after. The squirming, however, picked up.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	30. Pt 30: Bound and Helpless

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 30:_** _"_ Bound and helpless _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"There." Starscream stepped back, vicious smile firmly in place. After three hours and countless swear words, he'd finally done it.

His victim struggled, optics furious above the gag he'd strapped into place long before he'd started tying things down.

He chuckled, bending down to pat Skywarp's cockpit. Condescending was second nature, but he added an extra patronizing tone to his smug chiding. "Can't move, can you? Without your warp generator, you're rubbish at escaping. What use are you if you can't even get loose of a few ropes?" A 'few' being enough to pin Skywarp spread-eagle across the brig's immobilization cross, but pssht. Details.

"I think you need a lesson in teamwork," Starscream said lightly. Rich words coming from him, but he hadn't been the one to prank half the Armada this week. As Air Commander, he had to teach Skywarp a lesson in a very public way that let the Armada get back at their resident annoyance. Unrest in the ranks would unbalance everything if he didn't. "You won't be getting down from there until you convince someone to help you. No threats, no trickery, no false pretenses." He drew a delicate finger up Skywarp's side, and angry optics flickered, indignant rage faltering before another emotion.

Fear, but more than fear. Anticipation. Lust.

Starscream knew Skywarp too well not to know how much fun he'd have while the Armada enjoyed themselves at his expense.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	31. Pt 31: Orgasm Denial-Control

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 31:_** _"_ Orgasm denial/control _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Wait," Prowl murmured, optics intent. His hand rested between Bluestreak's doors, heavy on the roof of his altmode. As the sniper shifted, he brought more of his weight to bear on the other Praxian.

It grounded Bluestreak. Restless energy made him squirm, words stacking up underneath his vocalizer, but cold purpose spread out from Prowl's hand. It froze his joints. The words crystallized. Patience sank into his pounding fuel pump. Watchful, waiting _intent_ settled into his systems, a harness around his spark and mind like an almost physical weight that bore down until the buzz of his generator became a pounding beat so heavy Bluestreak swore it would thump him against the ground with every beat if Prowl didn't hold him down.

The pulse picked up as the target moved. Bluestreak adjusted his sights without thinking. It was a natural motion, as smooth as glass, and the beat became something deeper, throbbing through his chassis under his armor, beneath the hand of his controller.

"Wait," Prowl repeated, almost lying on top of the younger mech.

Bluestreak all but purred, never looking away as the world narrowed to the helm dead center in his scope. His rifle was in his hand. He held the power over the enemy, this time. No one could hurt him again. He could defend everyone.

Drunk on the sensation, he let his finger tighten on the trigger.

"Wait," Prowl breathed into his audio, and Bluestreak growled defiance at the order denying him his kill.

But he waited.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	32. Pt 32: BDSM with Teasing-Denial

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 32:_** _" _BDSM W/ Teasing/Denial__ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Having a lover with an innate understanding of destruction had its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, Soundwave was going to be a quivering wreck by the end of the night, and he knew it. Anticipation had dogged him the entire day. Seeing the end coming made his spark flare and knees weak. Imagining the sheer pleasure crashing down like a towering wave on top of him did nothing for his patience and everything for his charge level. He'd spent a lot of the last shift sitting down.

On the other hand, it was never easy being the one brought down hard.

His thoughts shortcircuited as the mech behind him knelt, one heavy-rated knee joint clanking down on the floor beside him. Sitting back on his heels as Soundwave was, the position cradled him in Bonecrusher's presence. Thick thighs held him between them, and the Constructicon still loomed over him. Bonecrusher was both broader and taller than he was. He _surrounded_ Soundwave.

Soundwave nearly succumbed. He could so easily lean back into the much stronger mech's chest.

He resisted at the last second. Temptation couldn't compare to the promised overload if he stayed obedient. His hands trembled but held together as commanded, although his shoulders tensed with the effort it took to keep his wrists crossed at the small of his back. So easy to reach out, but he knew the punishment if he dared.

Bonecrusher smelled of dirt and plastic explosives, but it was the sound of him that made Soundwave silently moan his need. Construction frames were built to last, dense plating and specialized tools fitted together carefully. Nobody looked at construction builds as fine examples of forging, but Bonecrusher was a superior frametype for no other reason than nobody had time to maintain equipment once work started. It made Bonecrusher an utterly fascinating contrast to Soundwave's own thin struts and sleek armor. Soundwave could listen to their differences all day.

He was handily distracted by Bonecrusher reaching around him to fondle his buttons. His hips bucked right up off his heels, and a squeal of stretched tape came from inside his dock as everything in him jerked in sudden shocked pleasure. Air stuttered in a gasp as his fans skipped.

Bonecrusher compressed his Play button in on long, glorious push, then let it release just as slowly while Soundwave's hips shuddered midair, thighs shaking.

"I told you not to move," the Constructicon rumbled in his audio. He knew exactly what that tone of voice did to Soundwave, and the communication mech sobbed air in remorse as Bonecrusher stood. "Guess you're not ready to play yet."

Soundwave collapsed back onto his heels, fingers denting his own hands as he struggled to stay where ordered. Never had words been harder to say. "Bonecrusher: correct."

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	33. Pt 33: Sex Toy in All Day

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 33:_** _"S_ _ex toy in all day_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You gotta lighten up, Mags," Rodimus had said.

Rodimus had been saying that since Ultra Magnus had met him. Hot Rod had been annoyingly deft at tricking him into doing so. Rodimus had the advantage of a superior rank. Before, Ultra Magnus had been the captain of a ship - and Hot Rod had managed to swipe that ship right out from underneath him. Now Rodimus started out with the ship under his command with Ultra Magnus as his executive officer.

Prowl had incredulously demanded how Ultra Magnus could take up with someone like Rodimus, as if there were a logical reason behind any of it, but Ultra Magnus had lightened up. Generally in short spurts measured by how long the afterglow lasted, but that was plenty long enough for Rodimus' purposes.

Ultimately, it came down to trickery. Deft, persistent, negotiated trickery. "The trick," Rodimus muttered to Drift as they watched the Duly Appointed Enforcer drag Swerve off in cuffs, "is more of a slang term."

Drift blinked at him. Then his face went slack as it hit him what Rodimus meant.

It turned out that Ultra Magnus was kind of mellow when he got laid. That's what Prowl didn't understand. Want to lighten Ultra Magnus up? Be his whore.

Hot Rod had taken money - and a ship, in the end. Rodimus took a signature on a contract dictating rank and crew membership. He also took money, but that was because Ultra Magnus was old-fashioned. Rodimus didn't mind. The money made him feel appreciated, in all honesty. He figured it probably meant his self-esteem was lower than it should be. Rung could likely tell him for sure, but that would necessitate explaining the little arrangement between him and Ultra Magnus, and it was probably unprofessional or some such slag.

Plus, well, old-fashioned. It wasn't done for an Enforcer to flash his floozy about openly. Rodimus didn't think it'd matter for his own dignity, but Ultra Magnus got weirdly uptight about reputations.

Rodimus was working on that. The uptightness, not the reputation. While Drift gaped at him and Swerve protested from across the room, Rodimus thumbed the switch hidden in the palm of his hand.

Ultra Magnus snapped upright, back struts rigid. He hustled Swerve from the room.

The ship's captain was observed cackling as they left. Nobody knew why.

He continued having random gigglefits throughout the rest of the shift. Drift eyed him as though he'd explode. Ratchet tossed him out of the medibay. Whirl and Brainstorm joined him in eerie chorus until they caught themselves, shut up, and turned to hustle the opposite direction down the hall.

Nobody looked at Rodimus closely enough to see the switch in the palm of his hand. He toggled it back and forth, enjoying the idea of what havoc it wrecked on Ultra Magnus. He'd always known the mech was kinky, but he'd never pegged him as into overload denial. Exhibitionism? What was it called when a mech walked around trying not to betray the remote-controlled vibrator buzzing away in his valve?

It was called a hot mess, at least once Ultra Magnus finally got off-duty. Rodimus skittered around the ship keeping out of reach for an hour more, playing with the settings for the perverse fun of it. _Bzz bzz bzz_. By the time Ultra Magnus caught up to him, the Duly Appointed Enforcer would have signed over more than a ship.

He gave Rodimus a nice tip afterward, too.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	34. Pt 34: Transation Sex (Fingering)

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 34:_** _Transaction sex (Fingering)_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Captivity was nothing like First Aid had feared, yet he was afraid of it as he'd never been afraid before.

Vortex came into the cell, an isolated room with bars on the door and nobody within hearing no matter how loud someone shouted, and First Aid had shouted. Not while Vortex was here with him, but before. Once Vortex arrived, the Autobot medic backed into a corner, visor wary. First Aid's hands were cuffed in front of him but he was otherwise free to move about. He hadn't been mistreated. If anything, his captors had treated him with unprecedented care. First Aid didn't know what to think of that, and he tried not to think too hard about it. He had the vague, scary idea that breaking him had been left to the interrogator.

Perhaps that was true, but not in the way he'd feared. In the rushed weeks after the Combaticons' reactivation, nobody had gotten past the initial remembered terror of Vortex's admittedly terrifying reputation as an interrogator. He was known for crazed battlefield maneuvers and taking his victims on wild rides on the winds he whipped into a frenzy with his rotor blades. That information had been dug up immediately to warn all the Autobots of what they were up again.

The older Autobots, the ones who had the experience back when the Combaticons had originally been around on Cybertron, had forgotten to warn the relatively new Protectobot team what else Vortex was known for. Unlike Soundwave, unlike any of the Constructicons, unlike any of the standard interrogators the Protectobots _had_ encountered, Vortex held a far more dangerous weapon than mere pain at his disposal: charisma.

Starscream could subvert entire Autobot bases if captured. He had the charm to sway even bitter enemies to trust him. Vortex didn't have that sheer blunt force of personality, but what skill he had served him well when interrogating prisoners. He could turn it to different purposes when necessary.

It was the same purpose in the end - getting what he wanted out of his subject - but he'd walked into First Aid's cell less interested in intimidation than persuasion. The Decepticons were short on medics. They wanted this one. He'd been given carte blanche to promise whatever needed to convince First Aid to defect.

Which Vortex outright told First Aid. The truth was a powerful tool in the right hands.

Sitting on the cell bed, relaxed as he looked up at the Autobot, he spread his hands like an offering. "How could we pass up this opportunity? It's not often we capture an absolute treasure like you." He shook his head to cut off First Aid's protest. "None of that modesty. There's no reason for it among Decepticons. You're a treasure to us. Stop and see yourself from our perspective. Imagine how precious medics are are to a faction made of warriors. We rely on you to put us back together and keep us working, and we recognize the training and dedication it takes to do a job like that. You're a specialist, a forged medic, and you'll be accorded that kind of respect. Mighty Megatron himself will come to you for repairs. The Constructicons will **all** defer to you. They're experienced technicians and engineers, but they know they don't measure up compared to an actual medic. Hook and Scrapper will consult with you on medical matters, and they will custom-build you a medbay full of whatever you desire. If you can imagine it, they will make it happen. It'll be the medbay of your dreams, if only you deign to repair us."

He shifted closer to the nervous medic. First Aid pressed into the corner, but Vortex stayed sitting, his hands still outstretched. No threat, only open offer. "We're offering you more than professional respect. We'd appreciate you, First Aid. We'll treat you like the god of repairs you are. Anything you want will be yours. Outside of the medbay, you'll have your pick."

The way he phrased it was an invitation, and First Aid couldn't suppress the question. "Pick of what?"

Vortex widened his visor as if surprised. "Of us. Any of us. All of us." His arm lashed out, quick as a striking snake. First Aid barely had time to flinch in terror before the hand grasping his wrist brought it in close for Vortex to nuzzle. The Decepticon bent over First Aid's captured hand with every evidence that he held a rare and irreplaceable item. "Do you like rotaries? You don't even have to ask. Lord Megatron decreed a long time ago that medics are one of the Decepticons' most valued assets. As one of us, your will is our pleasure. If you want me, you have me. I'll enjoy it," he assured First Aid as though that was the only possible issue out of the entire basket he'd just handed the medic, "but I don't have to. It doesn't matter if I do. We're yours however you want us, and we understand that keeping you happy and satisfied keeps us in working order. Pleasing our medics is a duty we take seriously. It's an honor many of us fight for."

"We're yours," Vortex said, gently pulling First Aid closer with the inevitable force of gravity, his red visor intent on the Autobot's blue, "if only you'll have us." He pressed First Aid's palm flat to his chest.

"I'm not a Decepticon," First Aid said, but his voice wavered. His hands were sensitive. Massive pain and damage could be inflicted on a medic's hands. He expected Vortex to turn violent any moment now, and part of him cringed, bracing for agony.

He didn't expect the plating under his hand to part.

Plasma heat, _spark_ heat, spilled out. It ran over First Aid's palm, and every sensor lit up. Shock blew his visor wide, and the medic stared into Vortex's open chest in utter astonishment.

The shock stunned him long enough for Vortex to pull First Aid's hand right up to his spark chamber. His voice remained quiet, persuasive, even as fingers flinched back from his vulnerable spark. "You could be a Decepticon. We'll make it worth your while. I know you're a pacifist. Medics so often are. You dislike violence, and I understand. I promise you'll never have to see combat again. Battle will never be your problem. Why would we ever expose such a precious resource to potential loss? We'll come to **you** for repairs. We'll bring the damaged to you. We'll never talk about politics or warfare in your presence. You can rule a medbay out of time, out of the **war** if that's what you want. You can work out your oaths in peace, with patients who you will never have to harm. No guns, no prisoners, no difficult decisions about the wrong or right thing when every mech you treat is your own and worships your hands for repairing him."

Vortex had taken a risk opening his chest, but the part of First Aid aware of how much damage he could do the Decepticon right now had just been reminded of oaths that directly contradicted that thought. He was a medic in the middle of a war, trying desperately to fulfill oaths to do no harm, to heal instead of fight, to never hurt anyone. Terribly conflicted, he curled his fingers.

Vortex shuddered and moaned, visor flickering offline. Bowing his head, he lowered his voice to a pleading whisper. "Do with me what you want, medic. Consider it a preview."

Dumbfounded, First Aid tried to let go, but his fingers were entwined in the wispy plasma of a spark. Vortex jerked like a puppet dancing on strings, pleasure singing across his innermost core, and First Aid could tell his throaty cry was entirely unfeigned.

When the medic hesitated, unable to pull free but unwilling to stir his fingers in someone's spark, Vortex blinked his visor back online to look up at him. "If…if you prefer a different frametype, we're all stand ready to serve. Do you like cars? the Stunticons are at your disposable. Do you like them shy and sleek? Breakdown's ready. Quiet and intense? Dead End is polished perfection. Wild? Wildrider. Blunt force and domineering - "

"Motormaster," First Aid mumbled without thinking, completing the sentence because he knew what Vortex was going to say, but the Decepticon took it to mean something else.

"He's on his way," Vortex agreed immediately. Fingers strong but gentle around the medic's wrist, he began to pull First Aid's hand out of his chest despite how his spark clung to it.

"No!"

Vortex froze. His spark was wrapped around the medic's fingers in what had to be an uncomfortable stretch, but he showed no sign of discomfort.

First Aid looked between the open spark - he could so easily kill Vortex right now, murdering the murderer - and the door of the cell. "I don't want Motormaster!"

Vortex didn't move. "Tell me who you want, medic. Any of us. We're yours."

"I don't want any of you!" He'd never touched a spark outside of medical procedures. His fingertips tingled. He couldn't keep them still. Even the smallest involuntary motion of his fingers swirled Vortex's spark, and the 'copter twitched. "I'm not a Decepticon. I **won't be** a Decepticon!" He tried to sound defiant. First Aid didn't know how defiant he could possibly sound with his fingers stroking someone's spark, but he tried.

Vortex made a tiny broken noise. "You could be."

"I don't want to be!"

The Decepticon looked up at him. Without breaking optic contact, he pulled First Aid's hand a little bit deeper. "Respect. Power. Pleasure. It's all yours for the taking, anything you want."

"I don't want it!"

"Liar," Vortex breathed, visor lighting crimson.

"I'm not!"

The interrogator shook his head, but not in mockery. More in the peculiar kind of pity Ratchet or Prime sometimes had when someone was lying to himself, and First Aid's throat closed. Vortex's voice held none of the hard edges or muted grief First Aid's mentors usually adopted, but the certainty in his voice was rock solid. "Everyone wants those things. It's only a matter of giving you the right combination."

No. He didn't have a price. He wasn't a sellout. First Aid clung to that thought even as Vortex folded one sensitive, sensor-singing hand around the pulsing plasma of his spark. No deal.

The spark glittered. It mesmerized First Aid. He stared into it for a minute, seeing half a dozen different mechs in Vortex's place, faceless Decepticons who could knock him flat effortlessly, except their chests were open in complete submission as he took his time fondling them however he wished.

His fans chopped air into ragged bursts from his vents as he tore his hand out of Vortex's hold, frantic not to care that the Decepticon gasped in more than pain. "No! I'm not like that!" He deleted the pictures as fast as they popped up. Pressing himself back into the corner, he turned off his visor and turned his head away for good measure, wrapping his arms around himself in futile protection. "Leave me alone!"

There was a moment of stillness, the moment before action. Before a decision. First Aid hoped whatever method of persuasion Vortex chose wouldn't hurt as much as he feared, but he hoped it hurt. He wanted it to hurt.

Because in the deepest, secret, hidden corner of his mind, he knew that if Vortex didn't hurt him, if the Decepticons opened the door right now, let him walk free, left that offer waiting silent and inviting…it would be proof enough that their sparks were his for the taking, and First Aid would come back.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	35. Pt 35: Reward Sex

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 35:_** _Reward Sex_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

When Megatron commended him for his hard work, Shockwave was pleased. When his Lord informed him a reward would be sent with the next shipment of energon from Earth, Shockwave was flattered. When the spacebridge opened to reveal Soundwave standing amidst the cubes, Shockwave was disappointed.

"Soundwave." Polite even in the midst of the letdown, Shockwave inclined his head. "What is the purpose of your visit?"

Soundwave tilted his head to the side, visor unreadable. "Purpose: Shockwave. Cooperation: preferred."

"As Lord Megatron commands," he responded on automatic. It didn't occur to him to say otherwise. A second audit. How like Megatron to call another audit of the Tower's efficiency a reward. It fit his Lord's sense of humor.

Shockwave shunted aside the feeling of being let down as he sidestepped the rush of drones running to ferry the energon to a more secure location.. "Very well. I will return to my work, if you do not require my collaboration." Unspoken was his assumption that Soundwave wouldn't need him in order to access the Tower's secure files. Cooperation with Soundwave often meant merely staying out of the communication specialist's way.

Soundwave said nothing in response. He stepped out of the room to all the drones into the spacebridge, and his collection of miniature spies likely vanished into the crowd. Shockwave knew they'd be a pain in his aft until Soundwave left. They always were. They called their inane pranks tests of his security system, and Soundwave went along with it.

Shockwave really didn't like Soundwave all that much. Four million years away from his company hadn't made the Guardian of Cybertron like him any more. He had many admirable qualities, but Shockwave was capable of separating professional approval and personal dislike.

It puzzled him that Soundwave followed him from the room, but he dismissed it from his thoughts. Soundwave would find whatever he'd been sent here to look for. Since he was acting on Megatron's authority, Shockwave's own rank as Guardian and General didn't apply. Being followed was irritating but not worth changing his schedule for. He had nothing to hide from Megatron.

From Starscream, always, but not from Megatron.

Soundwave was as unobtrusive, as per usual, and Shockwave completed his shift without disturbance. Soundwave worked at the console across the room from him, and there was a companionable silence between them. After four million years without anyone but the Tower garrison and Autobot rebels for company, the silent company was welcome. Shockwave didn't enjoy small talk, but there was a presence, a difference to a room when another mech was present. It was one of his favorite things about Soundwave. Soundwave never said anything unnecessary. Silent company was…nice.

Something even nicer in the more personal setting of his quarters, he discovered later. It seemed Megatron knew nothing of Shockwave's distaste for Soundwave. A reward had indeed been shipped from Earth.

Shockwave liked Soundwave a bit more after that.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	36. Pt 36: Power-Humiliation Kink

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 36:_** _"_ _Power/humiliation kink_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Hook made Starscream look shy. If their egos could stand side by side, the surgeon's would expand to crush the Air Commander's.

Soundwave knew, because Soundwave could feel the burgeoning plastic bubble of their self-centered conceit whenever he had to be in the same room as either of them. It felt as though an outside pressure attempted to squish him. Megatron's sheer force of personality had much the same effect, and Starscream's charisma made him dangerous because, like Megatron, he could envelope people in the clinging suffocating effect of his self-directed worship.

Hook had none of that charisma. Hook had pride founded in ability and ego unchecked by reality, and no one was convinced of his greatness but himself.

It was pure pleasure to cut Starscream off at the knees, deflating his arrogance and watching everyone around him realize the truth of him, but Soundwave found no greater pleasure than puncturing Hook's self-assurance. The audience was Hook alone, and Soundwave thoroughly enjoyed the cold creep across the surgeon's mind when Hook was forced to humble himself or - perhaps worse for Hook's ego and all the more savory - when the surgeon honestly felt the degrading pull of humility.

Megatron might have meted out the physical punishment portion of the Constructicons' discipline, but he knew what Soundwave liked. He administered the beatings and left the rest for Soundwave to administer.

Soundwave enjoyed this duty thoroughly.

"It was…unwise to have challenged Lord Megatron's rule," Hook forced out, spitting the words while staring ahead and just above Soundwave's helm. "He has taught us the errors of our ways, and we are grateful to have been allowed a second chance. I live to serve him."

Each word burned. Soundwave could feel the low-grade pain in the back of Hook's thoughts, but he also felt the fear. This was a second chance the Constructicons didn't deserve. Even Hook's innate arrogance couldn't dismiss the risk of execution for treason.

His throat worked the longer Soundwave kept silent. The fear rose.

Soundwave relished the erosion of his confidence.

Hook was the third Constructicon brought in for interrogation, and Mixmaster and Scrapper had probably warned him to delete any mention of deserving leadership. The Constructicons all believed they should lead the Decepticons, but Megatron had already proven his strength. Their leader was strong, stronger than even Devastator, and Soundwave was merciless in ferreting out disloyal thoughts. Scrapper had ended the interrogation on his knees, swearing he lived to serve, all but begging Soundwave to tell him how, even _hint_ at how the Constructicons could reaffirm their dedication to the Decepticon Cause and their personal loyalty to Lord Megatron. By the time he left, nothing but strut-melting relief had filled his thoughts.

Soundwave intended Hook to be brought even lower. He intended Hook to beg and crawl, fear eating him alive until he viewed subservience to Soundwave's will as a desirable thing, a thing to be asked for. Offering himself as Soundwave's plaything would be his own suggestion. Compared to execution for treason, Soundwave would be a _sanctuary_.

Granting his protection would result in its own pleasures, but Soundwave considered this part of the night to be the real reward for his loyal service. It was the foreplay. The invisible dissection of an ego was his favorite part of internal investigations.

He liked to break his toys before he broke them in.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	37. Pt 37: Facesitting

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 37:_** _"Facesitting_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Starscream was fast, clever, and cunning. He was, however, no match for Megatron's sheer brawn. This was a well-known fact.

Not so well-known was why Megatron no longer physically pinned down his traitorous Second-in-Command.

Oh, he beat the paint off Starscream as a matter of course. He'd tackle him, kick him, punch him, even stomp on or stand on him. He just wouldn't sit on him after one of the Seeker's infamous instances of treason. Ever.

Ever again, anyway.

In retrospect, he couldn't believe he'd done it in the first place. It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. In the heat of the moment, it had made sense. Megatron had actually thought it a wise decision despite every sign to the contrary, and there had been signs. There had been _signs_. He just hadn't paid attention to them.

Kneeling on top of Starscream's prone form after an extended fight had seemed like one more humiliation to heap on the loser. As a bonus, it was a convenient way to muffle him. The Seeker had been on his back, bent wings rattling on the floor as he'd heaved for air, and Megatron rolled, braced his hand on the shrill idiot's throat to cut off his voice, and mounted the recalcitrant fool's face, thighs closed around his helm in clear warning even as he rested his weight right on Starscream's face. A single choked shriek got out, one shocked jerk of legs and arms, and then Megatron snapped his knees in tight to Starscream's helm.

Starscream went completely still.

So did everyone else in the room. That really should have been Megatron's first clue.

But he'd been too caught up in roaring, "I am Megatron!" as much at their audience as the mech beneath him. No one moved. He took it to mean everyone was intimidated, as intended, and he let his knees spread out, pinning Starscream by weight and threat alone. "No petty plot by weak fools will destroy me!"

The hand he kept on Starscream's throat registered a trembling flutter, rapidfire swallowing or shallow breathing, and Starscream made a small noise under him. Soundwave made much the same noise from across the room. Shockwave completed the set.

Starscream was no match for him physically, but that didn't mean the Air Commander was a lightweight. He'd put up enough of a fight that they were both running hot. Delivering a rousing speech riled Megatron further, his systems running charged. It didn't occur to Megatron to think of what that meant in terms of their current position until Starscream strained up into his restraining hand, helm burrowing further between his thighs to give his altmode trigger a long, hot lick.

Megatron liked to think what happened next bolstered his authority as well as any speech, but history told a different tale. Rewarding bad behavior just meant Starscream never learned his lesson.

So, no. Megatron didn't sit on his Second to _subdue_ him anymore.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	38. Pt 38: Autoasphyxiation

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 38 :_** _"_ Autoasphyxiation _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"What're you doing with that?" the trusting fool of an Autobot said as Thundercracker picked up the damn walking stick. "I need that, y'know." Bumblebee didn't sound weary of that fact; merely accepting in a matter-of-fact, nothing-to-be-done-about-it manner. The guileless blue optics turned up at the Decepticon standing over him held interest, not fear.

Thundercracker pulled the walking stick through one hand and back through the other as he gazed down at it. Never had a single, simple device managed to make him feel guiltier, and that on top of frustration from unsuccessfully doing his best to reject any form of guilt for what his faction had done. He couldn't take responsibility for anything beyond his own actions. He couldn't. History would crush him if he tried, and he refused.

However, Bumblebee summoned guilt and pride in equal amounts every time he broke into Thundercracker's home.

(He wasn't _visiting_. Thundercracker wasn't so weak that he felt lonely. He would never _invite_ someone here. He had his televisions and the secret screenplay tucked into his cockpit, and he didn't need anything else.)

The cheery yellow Autobot was a reminder of what he'd sacrificed while simultaneously existing as a reason for why he'd done it. Thundercracker still wasn't certain what he felt about the mech overall, but he knew how to put off thinking about the unspoken issues between them. He twirled the walking stick, judging the balance with a thoughtful expression. Too short and light for a sword, but he'd used worse.

He'd learned some _things_ from Earthling TV. Things he'd been curious about, things he hadn't wanted to know, things he'd attempted to scratch from his databanks, and some things that gave him ideas.

"Thundercracker?" Bumblebee asked, a little more alert this time.

The Seeker smoothly spun the chair in front of the TVs around, leaning forward over Bumblebee with his knees holding the chair in place on either side of the minibot's feet. "The Earthlings have something called autoerotic asphyxiation," he said while sliding his hands apart on the stick. He cradled it between thumbs and forefingers. Bumblebee's optics widened as it pressed like a restraint bar across his hood, and Thundercracker slid it slowly up to nestle into the more vulnerable cables of his throat. "Autoasphyxiation seems more appropriate in this situation."

Bumblebee blinked several times even as he leaned back under the pressure. The walking stick compressed his main air shaft, but he managed a laugh. "Was that - did you make a **pun**?"

Wordplay was a good writing skill, but not one Thundercracker felt like discussing right now. He put a little more weight onto the stick to cut off the distracting noise. "Mm."

Face lit in laughter blocked by the stick, the minibot reached up under the stick to grab a handhold and pull Thundercracker down into a breathless kiss.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	39. Pt 39: Neck Biting

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 39:_** _"Neck biting_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Even in an amorous mood, Starscream did more damage than not. Drugging him to the wingtips merely dulled his razor edges.

The nips up and down Megatron's neck had little strength behind them. Oh, Starscream was trying. His optics were dull and burnt paint sifted off his injured wings, but his teeth were sharp enough for the job by themselves. He just had no ability to aim at the moment. Megatron had no doubt a pair of fangs would bury themselves in his main fuel line once the Seeker reoriented himself, but for now…

Teeth scraped across tensile cables.

Megatron didn't change expression, but the jerking tension in the cables being nibbled on betrayed how much attention he paid to the mech who'd limped into the main bridge and draped over him. The rest of the Decepticons on shift were pretending sudden blindness, but Megatron could hear their fans whirring.

Starscream burrowed his face into Megatron's throat, insistent fingers digging between thick armor plates to pull him closer, hold him more secure. If Megatron wouldn't hold him - and he wouldn't, because wanting to be held didn't mean Starscream wouldn't take off any hand that dared try - then he'd make his own nest. From the feel of it, he thought he could chew Megatron soft enough to lie on.

Starscream's optics slitted open, drowsy and oddly content. His teeth closed. Megatron twitched, hand half-raised before iron control set it back on his throne's armrest.

At the door to the bridge, a Constructicon hovered in fretting silence. He didn't quite dare interrupt. Starscream was such a violent cuddler when he was damaged, and interrupting right now would bring down Megatron's wrath. Everyone knew not to interfere when Starscream escaped the medibay.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	40. Pt 40: Pain Play (Recipient)

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 40:_** _"_ Pain play (recipient) _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Why does Lord Megatron not welcome my attentions?"

Each word stripped a layer of pride away, but Shockwave had to know. He had to have an answer, and since he had no right to demand one from his lord, that left him finding it in a more roundabout manner. Hence asking Soundwave. Up until yesterday, the stoic mech would be the last person Shockwave would have consulted on the matter. Yesterday, however, he'd dared propose a threesome.

It had made sense at the time. He'd been of the firm opinion that Megatron's preferred intimate companion was the communications specialist. Given the utter shock on Megatron's face once Shockwave fumbled through an explanation - as the original proposition had been met with baffled silence - that seemed to have been an assumption made in error.

Shockwave had accepted Megatron's rejection with proper humility, but the scientist in him couldn't let the matter lie. If he was not deemed acceptable, and Soundwave was not warming Megatron's bed, then what barrier blocked them?

And Shockwave knew Soundwave was as frustrated as he was. Polls indicated (remember: scientist) that the majority of the Decepticons believed Soundwave to be as much fragtoy as loyalist, based solely on how Soundwave's spark filled his visor when in their leader's presence. Both he and Shockwave were romantically inclined and absolutely denied.

By what?

Soundwave gave him a dirty look, but Shockwave had chosen his time well. Soundwave had been dismissed from Megatron's presence yet again, and there was no one else nearby. Perhaps that was why he chose to answer.

He turned and touched a wall console, wirelessly transmitting a video to the screen. Shockwave stepped closer to see -

\- to see Starscream attack Megatron while their lord's back was turned. Megatron whirled, wrathful and aggressive, but Shockwave knew his lord enough know the excitement stark on Megatron's face held as much arousal as anger. Smoke rose from the scorch marks striping the silver of Megatron's back, but it seemed almost erotic. When he seized Starscream by the neck, he smirked into the fingers that clawed at his face, relishing how the Seeker continued to fight.

The two loyal Decepticons watched what followed in silence. There was an unpleasant amount of screeching. There was also a telling amount of unrestrained kicking and clawing as Starscream fought the beating. The Seeker was just as violent in the aftermath as apologies were tendered and accepted. Megatron, on the other hand, went immediately and magnanimously gentle once discipline was dealt out to his satisfaction. If anything, it seemed to inspire Starscream to greater struggles. Megatron's power generator thrummed loud enough to vibrate Soundwave's speakers every time Starscream got in a sharp _bite._

The screen dimmed to black once the action ceased.

"I see," Shockwave said after a few minutes. That did explain a great deal.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	41. Pt 41: Power Bottom

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 41:_** _"_ Power bottom _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Slap me." A hesitant hand smacked Overlord across the face, and he frowned. That didn't even qualify as a love-tap. "Harder." It came around in a backhand that he barely felt. "Slaggit, **hit me** ," he growled, and this time the blow took him across the mouth hard enough to make his lower lip throb lightly.

He licked it, not to soothe it but instead savor the hint of pain. "Better. Again, but put your shoulder into it. And say the line."

Nautilator squinted at him, seeing a bad idea in the making but not intelligent enough to forego the momentary pleasure of dominating a much larger and stronger mech. "You don't give me orders," the Seacon said in that familiar voice.

It shook Overlord all the way down to the programmed Achilles virus deep in his coding. A shudder wracked him right as Nautilator slapped him across the face, and it knocked Overlord to all fours, hands braced against the floor.

He was smiling.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	42. Pt 42: Dirty Talk

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 42:_** _"_ Dirty talk _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"What you doing back there, baby?"

Sandstorm patted the flank of his buddy's altmode. "Appreciating how your aft looks like from this angle." And what a gigantic aft it was. Sandstorm had the triplechanging part down pat, but his sizeshifting didn't match Octane's for sheer mass. Dune buggies couldn't compare to tanker trucks.

He didn't mind. Being small meant he could really dig his fingers in for a good grip. He liked filling his palms this way, one grope at a time.

An amused hum came from the truck cab. "Getting awful handsy for just a look." It sounded like a suggestion. The rev of a powerful engine backed it up. Octane saw where this was going, and it was good.

Sandstorm draped himself over the tanker, grinning. "What, you want more than this? You want me to open you up," he flicked a finger against a fuel hatch, "stick it in, and drain you dry? Is that what you need? Imagine me sucking the energon out of you a swallow at a time, your levels dropping and stopping, and only my tongue on the hose'll control how fast I sip from you. Or maybe I don't need a hose. I could just wrap my lips around your intake!" He cupped his palm over the now-open hatch, diddling the intake hidden underneath with the tip of his index finger as he talked. Beads of slick fluid smeared as he teased little circles in it, and his optics gleamed eager anticipation. "What'll I get if I stick my tongue inside here as far as I can? I mean, I can put it in pretty far," not to brag or anything, "but are you full enough? Can I lap you empty one lick at a time? Just keep thrusting my tongue in and out, swallowing every time, breaking the seal on your intake to force air in and pump you dry." His mouth felt dry and yet he had to keep swallowing. "I'll tell you how you taste. You always taste so good, Octane. You always carry the good stuff."

"Baby," Octane said in a rough voice as Sandstorm bent to run his tongue around the rim of the intake he'd been teasing, "you've got no idea what I carry for you."

Sandstorm smirked and took a good long lick. He had a pretty good idea what would spurt into his mouth if he kept talking.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	43. Pt 43: Masochism-Strip tease

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 43:_** _"_ _Masochism_ /strip tease _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Stop stop stop please ple **urk!** " Snap Trap arched, clawing desperately at the wall he was pinned to. "Stop! Oh please, oh Primus, I'm begging you, I'm **begging** you - " The massive presence holding him to the wall leaned just enough on him that the extra weight sent his sensors screaming about imminent collapse. Shame fought against pride, but both lost out to terror.

He was terrified, begging for his life, but there was something indescribable about having this much power bent upon him and him alone. Being at Overlord's mercy was a lot like being on a roller coaster that had burst into flames. Was he about to die or go on the ride of his life? It was a delicious danger, all the more exciting for how unpredictable the outcome was.

Snap Trap sobbed for cool air even as the dark purr in his audio shuddered through his interface equipment and redlined every combat instinct in his abused body. "Who are you begging, little mech?" Overlord purred, breathing hot air deliberately into the hatch gaaapiiing open in the side of his helm.

Snap Trap's knees gave out, not that it mattered with how the supersoldier held him helpless. Feedback garbled from his vox box as the cover for another of his systems cracked down the middle. "No!"

The armor tore away. Agony blazed across his sensor net as Overlord ripped the pieces off without care for how it hurt, or maybe that's why he did it. Snap Trap made a small sound, a swallowed whimper, and then a huge finger nudged into the raw opening. It found the port hidden underneath, and his urgent squirming turned into a frantic, futile, kicking struggle. "No! Stop!"

"Yes," Overlord said. "Yes, and yes. You protest, but I can hear your systems. You want this." He cocked his head to the side. "Unless…"

Metal scraped as the prodding finger temporarily left that wide-open port in order to turn Snap Trap's helm to the side. It hurt, Overlord twisted his head too far, but Snap Trap refused to scream. Panic-bright optics met the optics of the mech sitting in the chair behind what was usually his desk but what might be a vivisection table soon enough. If Snap Trap didn't say what his torturer wanted to hear, Overlord would simply take him apart until he did. The focus of this little game wasn't Snap Trap, after all. Overlord wanted to hear begging directed at the right person - or at the person playing the part, anyway.

Snap Trap mustered a defiant snarl. "Eat slag and die, Nautilator!"

Nautilator knew exactly what his captain thought about him sitting at the desk, and he looked as nervous as he felt. Despite that, his voice stayed steady and slightly amused. "Ah, still so feisty. How fortunate one of my best is here to educate you on the error of your ways."

"My pleasure, Megatron."

"It's a pleasure to watch you at work."

Overlord preened at the praise. Snap Trap could _feel_ him preen. He'd have scoffed, but he had his own issues to deal with at the moment. The rich, low rumble of Megatron at his most deadly shouldn't have been a turn-on, not after ages being Nautilator's exasperated gestalt commander, but electricity still skittered under his armor like a tidal wave of dispersing charge.

Snap Trap groaned and shut off his optics, unable to look away as Nautilator blinked at him. How humiliating. He'd just overloaded in front of Nautilator. Nautilator!

"Proceed," his subordinate commanded after a moment.

The finger at his port forced its way inside, and Snap Trap's despairing groan turned into a surprised shriek. The violation burned, a stretch too wide, but it was an aching pleasure. Even as his port walls split apart, a boiling shock of pure lust hit Snap Trap's circuitry, ambient charge transmitted through Overlord's finger. Snap Trap clamped down on a plea and writhed, knowing he couldn't escape but unable to stop himself.

Overlord chuckled and reached for another hatch.

At the rate he was being stripped down, Snap Trap would be begging 'Megatron's' mercy in no time. Hopefully while riding Overlord's hands like the squealing wreck he'd been last time.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	44. Pt 44: Balls

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 44:_** _"_ balls _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The first time was genuinely just an accident of combat. Thundercracker had no idea the Autobot medic knew hand-to-hand. He took Ratchet's foot right under the cockpit without a second's warning, folding in half around it while utter shock splayed across his face. The follow-up kick in the crotch was totally unnecessary. Thundercracker was already down.

But, uh, the kick was a nice touch.

Well, not really _nice_ in the conventional sense of the word. Thundercracker was already down, but the whammy straight to the business finished him off. It wasn't physically possible to limp while airborn, yet somehow that's exactly what he did all the way back to base. Turning his knees in made him fly a little funny. He wobbled in the air. Even Hook, crown prince of unsympathetic sadism, whistled an impressed note before handing over a pain patch.

Thundercracker's wingmates simply laughed for about an hour and a half. The other Decepticons looked askance at them, but no explanation was offered. Thundercracker growling curses and throwing junk at them from the repairberth didn't put a dent in their amusement. Scavenger kept bringing him more things to pitch at their heads, and Skywarp sounded more and more like Starscream the longer they did their hyena impression.

He was still giggling sporadically when Thundercracker arrived at their quarters that night. "I hate you," the beleaguered Seeker muttered, pushing past his unsympathetic glitch of a wingmate.

"No you do~on't," Skywarp sing-songed.

Thundercracker eyed him. Skywarp clearly knew something he didn't. This level of giggly evil only came out mid-prank.

The door at his back swooshed open, and Thundercracker stiffened. He relaxed an instant later as an identity ping hit him, then stiffened again because nobody with a molecule of common sense relaxed with Starscream at their back. Stepping to the side, he turned and froze.

Painted up, Starscream was still Starscream. His red and white remained the same. Painting grey over blue didn't change him. The grey chevron affixed to his forehelm was different, but he still looked like himself. The Autobot decals slapped haphazardly onto his wings were a mockery accenting how very Decepticon he really was.

The slam of his foot between Thundercracker's thighs completed the illusion enough for Thundercracker to work with, however.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	45. Pt 45: Spanking

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 45:_** _"spanking_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Every once and a while, the balance of the Autobot officer cadre skewed. Jazz vanished out on a mission for weeks. Optimus Prime fell into a brooding, angsty mood of should-haves and could-haves. Ratchet was occupied telling the Prime twenty times an hour that self-flagellation was a great kink but a horrible hobby. Wheeljack discovered something like, say, Nascar.

Oh, Primus. Nascar. The Autobots were never going to be the same once they found out about corporate sponsors.

Anyway, while everyone else went to do their own thing, Prowl buckled down into ultra-officer mode. The mech didn't have personal pastimes. He had normal duties, and then he had everyone else's duties. Instead of complaining or kicking the slackers back into doing their own jobs, he seemed to think he could do everything. Which would be fine - Prowl could manage the _Ark_ 's mundane day-to-day work fairly well, actually - except he did it all with his own personal twist.

That didn't go over so well. Coming out of nowhere and trying to micromanage Special Operations just didn't work. Mirage took up knife practice anytime Prowl walked through the common room door, and the Praxian told him to work on his aim without noticing that Mirage had been aiming the throws _at his head_. He should have been _glad_ Mirage couldn't throw a knife.

Perhaps a greater hint that he should butt out of everyone's business was Hot Spot taking up guard outside the medbay. "You're not allowed in," the Protectobot commander said firmly when Prowl attempted to enter.

Prowl frowned up at him. "I was unaware that the medbay was under quarantine."

"It's not. I said **you're** not allowed in."

The frown deepened. "I can order you out of my way."

Hot Spot did his best impression of an immobile object. "I can disobey that order." He shook his head as Prowl's optics narrowed in the beginning of annoyance. "The medbay doesn't need your input on greater efficiency. First Aid would prefer if you would submit a report to Ratchet if you have suggestions." They hadn't been suggestions, and they did nothing for First Aid's temper when dictated to him. Prowl could take that slag straight to Ratchet and see how that went over.

Prowl's lips tightened into a disapproving line, but he was intelligent enough to see this was going to devolve into calling in backup to escort Hot Spot to the brig if he pushed. Turning on his heel, he stalked off down the hall with his doors held at an angle that radiated offense. Hot Spot watched him go.

Two minutes later, a certain old codger strolled by. "Prowl been around?" Kup asked as he passed. "Got a call that I needed t' have a talk with the mech."

Hot Spot silently pointed the right direction. Kup threw him a lazy salute and sauntered in pursuit. Hot Spot watched him go, nodded to himself, and abandoned his position guarding the door. He could see the problem had been taken care of.

Two hours later, the medbay door opened. Prowl hesitated at the threshold, however. "May I enter?"

First Aid eyed him warily, but subdued exhaustion had replaced the brisk impatience that had characterized the Praxian for days. Plus, he was resting his weight on one leg in a funny way that pinged First Aid's medical programming. "Of course."

"Thank you." Yup, that was definitely a limp. Prowl winced as he limped into the medbay, and First Aid made a tiny, sharp sound of alarm, hustling to help.

Before he could get there, Kup strode through the door and caught Prowl an open-handed smack square on the skidplate. "What'd I say, kid?"

Prowl _yelped_ , stumbling forward into First Aid. The medic steadied him, surprised. His visor widened as he held the Praxian upright. Prowl was warm, _very_ warm, buzzing with roused charge.

He looked up at First Aid with a pained, wry smile even as his engine revved embarrassingly loud. "I apologize for my behavior the past week. You were in no way deserving of a lecture on proper procedure, and I was out of line to have scolded you."

"Better," Kup said, nodding, and Prowl yipped as the old Autobot popped him in the aft again. "Alright, have a nice day," he said to First Aid as he spanked Prowl out of the medbay with little popping smacks to the…dented and quite scuffed skidplate. He'd obviously been 'reasoning' with Prowl for a while, now. "Shoo, you. Time for your next apology. Who else you been talkin' down to?"

"I - Perceptor, perhb **aps!** " Prowl twisted, engine whining as he tried to scoot his abused aft out of reach. " **Ah!** Uhm. Kup!"

Kup ruthlessly grabbed him by a door and held him still for a good hard spanking. It was a lesson against attempting to avoid discipline. It was also a reward for repentance. Prowl hung onto the door frame to stay upright, knees turning in and hips thrust forward in an unconscious attempt to escape the loud smacks to his behind. Kup didn't let up until Prowl stopped trying to jerk away, instead standing slightly bent over to offer his aft in a pose of whimpering submission to the rain of harsh smacks.

"I said move it!" Kup barked with one last clang where it'd sting the most.

"Yessir!" Prowl pulled free and all but _ran_ down the hall.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	46. Pt 46: Toy Teasing

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 46:_** _"_ toy teasing _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

That was a wrench.

It wasn't a whip. It wasn't a blade. It wasn't even Kup's ever-present cy-gar. It was a plain wrench. Hook eyed it as though the simple tool would explode. What was a wrench doing on Kup's table? From the dull markings on its greasy handle, Hook guessed it had been liberated from a low-level maintenance garage somewhere. Maybe even the janitor's closet in the basement of this very building. It certainly wasn't one of his tools. His tools were all in better shape than that. Hook made sure of that. With his tongue, when Kup was feeling particularly cranky.

"See you found my latest toy."

Speaking of cranky.

Hook cringed on reflex as he turned, ducking his head below Kup's without a second's thought. Oh, he _knew_ that tone of voice. Anticipation warmed his systems at the same time his spark sank down to the floor. "Master," he said in a thready whine straight from his engine. It revved in a disturbing thrum that took all the strength out of survival instinct. It should have urged him to run from danger, not brace for impact.

From the smirk on Kup's face, protesting whatever punishment the old clank had planned would be an exercise in humiliation. Hook had a tendency to put his foot in it in every way possible. Pride demanded he at least try, but despite what the nurses said behind his back, he was capable of learning humility. Or at least he could learn to avoid mistakes. It took him a while, but repetition got through even his thick helm.

In the interest of, well, his own interests, Hook skipped useless dithering and dropped to his knees before his Master. Best to get the worst out of the way - the cringing, sniveling _waiting_ for the first blow to fall - and just surrender. Kup would do what he wanted anyway. Cooperation never helped, but sometimes prostration did.

Kup's smirk took on an unhinged twist Hook had come to both fear and love. Reaching over the Constructicon, he picked the wrench up.

One second he was leaned forward over Hook. The next, lightning fast, something struck Hook so hard in the side of the face it knocked the surgeon sideways to the floor.

"Fragging Pitspawn glitching greaseburn clutchbiter!" The arch of his cheek _throbbed_ , the point where smooth planes of facial plating met suddenly dented, and the bottom of his visor ached raw where metal had scraped a thick groove. Hook saw double briefly as his vision reset from the severe rattling. Indignation and rage beat out common sense, and he heaved up off the elbow he'd caught himself with to confront his assaulter, roaring, "What in the scrap iron metal smelter was **that** for?!"

Kup casually caught him full on the other side of his face on the backhand.

It didn't just knock him to the floor. This time, Hook went sprawling. The blow tumbled him to the side so hard he hit the floor on both elbows and still kissed floor. His other cheek scored an indent to match the first, but his forehelm clunked against the floor a second before heavy weight came down on the back of his helm cowl, mashing a flat spot on his nose as Kup stomped him into a full faceplant.

"If I have to tell you what you did wrong, then you're not really sorry," Kup said with the air of a mech answering a rhetorical question, and Hook howled into the floor as the wrench whalloped his crane arm next. "Guess I'll have to beat the right answer out of you."

Hook's systems stalled out, then hiccuped as the wrench came down again. It abruptly occurred to him that Kup was battering him intentionally for the sheer sadistic joy of making him walk out of this room to face the rest of Cybertron wearing submission all over his plating. There were marks on his face and along his crane arm that couldn't be buffed out by his next shift. The dents could be popped out, but the paint couldn't be repaired in time even if he was graciously granted permission to try.

The wrench came down again, but the loud clang on armor couldn't be heard over Hook moaning.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	47. Pt 47: Shy first-timer

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 47:_** _"_ _Mech A being all shy and nervous because they want to interface with mech B, they really, really do, but either they have absolutely no experience and are afraid it will hurt or they do have experience and it did hurt, and B just ever-so-gently comforting them, holding them and whispering that this is going to feel good, that they won't hurt A, and that they can stop immediately if A wants"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Scavenger had the self-confidence of a trauma victim - except, surprisingly enough, during interfacing.

Onslaught found that out the hard way. He'd thought the Constructicon would be an easy mark, his next fragtoy ready to be sculpted into a nervous, submissive, eager-to-please berthwarmer he could have when and how he wanted, which was the only way he ever interfaced. Even before being trapped into a gestalt, Onslaught hadn't been interested in repeating the unpleasantries of the past. Decepticons fragged by force. It was all powerplay and games, and he'd started out near enough to the bottom of the hierarchy that the loyalty program felt uncomfortably like revisiting old memories. He dreaded the days Megatron felt the need to remind him of his place.

Having a Constructicon fragtoy had been as much a move against the stronger Constructicon team as it was acquiring a method of releasing charge that didn't require using one of his own gestalt. Not that he'd plug it in any of the other Combaticons. They were all nasty in varying degrees, from moderately disturbing at the Brawl level all the way up to pouring bleach on his own processors after finding out what Blast Off was like under that aloof attitude. Oh, Primus. Onslaught had thought Vortex was a sick fragger, but Blast Off had graduated from that level long ago.

When Scavenger flipped them on the berth, Onslaught flashed back to education via gestalt link in the single instant of horror that struck. Since he hadn't anticipated a fight, he found himself pinned in an armlock before he could struggle loose. Scavenger rested just enough weight on his back to make pain tingle in his shoulder joints, and Onslaught froze.

"I'm going to frag you through this," the Constructicon said in the eager, rushed voice he said everything in. It was that tone Onslaught had zeroed in on first, but Scavenger sounded the exact same when holding him down as when Onslaught had been shoving him down onto the berth. More earnest, even, and his vents flooded hot air down on his captive in an excited wave. "I'm going to frag you until you can't stand, and then I'll carry you to the washracks to clean you up so nobody will be able to tell you took it from me, screaming for more the whole while. 'Cause I'm going to make you scream. Everybody says I'm dumb for digging these up out of collapsed buildings," he grunted, squirming as though rooting around for something in subspace, and Onslaught managed to turn his head enough against the berth to see a veritable cornucopia of interface aids tumble out beside them, "but I've been collecting them for **ages** , and I know how to use every single one of them. You'll see. I'll make you see."

Onslaught gaped at the sex toys. That…was a treasure trove of antiques. The back of his mind, the part of him that became Bruticus, retained enough of Swindle's personality to scan the mound of old devices, sit up, and make little whining sounds of greed. The part of him that was Blast Off judged the things plebian, but Vortex held a sort of professional interest. Brawl's sleeping compatible processor space skipped thought and went straight to activating Onslaught's interface equipment.

Which had already been primed and ready in anticipation of teaching a new fragtoy its place. Being under Scavenger instead of on top chilled Onslaught's backstruts but did little to dampen his roused charge.

It didn't help that the breathy voice in his audio kept whispering hot air and hotter words. "Clean you up, dry you, maybe put on a coat of polish, and next time we can do it all over again. No evidence, so I won't have to share you with anyone else. Just mine. All mine." Scavenger squeezed the back of Onslaught's left thigh just under his aft, thumb rubbing his inner thigh. The idea of keeping this between them obviously excited him.

Having joined a combiner team of his own, Onslaught understood the appeal. Gestalts shared bodies and minds. Something to keep as just his own had become a thing of the past.

One he wasn't opposed to revisiting, actually. Surprised by the tremor in his spark, Onslaught squirmed. It knocked his knee against one of the toys. It began to vibrate. "Let go of me," he commanded, refusing to panic. Refusing to demand. Powerless mechs made futile demands. Mechs in control issued orders.

"Shhhhh," Scavenger crooned. He ignored the order. "I'm going to take such good care of you. You'll enjoy this. See?" The toy rotated, picked up and nudged into Onslaught's knee joint until it came up against _just_ the right wire.

Onslaught's visor widened as shivering pleasure _lit up_ his whole leg. "Stoppuggnn. Stop it!"

Scavenger rode his bucking hips, tweaking his arms enough that Onslaught stopped dead, shoulders straining. Whatever else Scavenger was, he was experienced in restraining mechs on berths. He'd had eons in the repairbay helping Hook. Still cheerful, he used his free hand to begin attaching suction cups one at a time up Onslaught's back. The little nodes in the middle of the clear cups sparked a bit as connections were made, and Onslaught's systems erupted into merry havoc at the sudden crackle of electricity.

"Get **ahhnn** get off me!" the Combaticon choked out, but the back of his head sat up to take notice. Vortex's interest and Brawl's lust were as part of him as his own thoughts now. Add in Swindle's appreciation for some fine, expensive equipment, and Onslaught was fighting back flattery as much as overwhelming spasms of pleasure.

"I'm going to get you off," Scavenger promised, and if he hadn't sounded like he needed this as much as he needed approval, Onslaught would have thought he'd completely misjudged the mech. But no. No, Scavenger was still seeking, searching, needing needing needing.

Needing with a shocking aggressiveness. Onslaught hadn't seen this coming.

"I don't want this," he gritted out, humiliated to resort to reasoning with his captor instead of commanding him away. His body shivered, the toy in his knee going up another notch, but he stubbornly shut out Bruticus, his own body, the pleasure singing down his wires. He _never_ enjoyed being dominated. He wasn't a toy to be used in another Decepticon's powerplay!

Scavenger's fingers pet his cannons. "You don't? Then why'd you start pushing me around?"

…ah. Well. How to explain he'd wanted to brutalize an already damaged mech into meek obedience? Er. Awkward, this. "Bad habits," Onslaught said shortly.

The Constructicon leaned forward to rub his face mask up Onslaught's right cannon, putting the perfect amount of pressure on Onslaught's arm to press the back of one pinned hand against a suction cup. Onslaught's vocalizer fitzed static as the electrical circuit temporarily rerouted through his arm and shoulder.

"We could make this a habit," Scavenger said hopefully. "A really good habit. I'll make this good for you. I will. You can even have the crystal one," he said with the air of someone making a great sacrifice, and given his attitude toward the things he collected, Onslaught was reluctantly interested in finding out just what kind of item Scavenger wouldn't want to give away.

He shifted about on the berth as much as he could, arching against the armlock, but he couldn't see whatever it was.

He could feel it, though. Onslaught's mind went utterly blank as one of his hatches was coaxed open and a cold, hard length eased in.

"Alright?" Scavenger asked anxiously. "Is this alright? I…it's supposed to feel good." He hesitated. Something seemed to have occurred to him. "Do you really want me to stop?"

If Onslaught could have pieced a coherent thought together right then, he might have yelled at the Constructicon about asking that question sometime when _not_ shoving a toy made of conductive, circuit-laced, grown-for-interfacing-purposes-alone crystal all up in his business. As it was, he just quivered on the berth staring blindly off to the side as every sensor in his body agreed that the preprogrammed patterns currently uploading into their recievers were just _delightful_ so why didn't they start to mimic those patterns and _blink on and off at their highest setting_.

"Are you okay?" got through the haze of building pleasure after a few minutes. Primus alive but that was intense.

"Proceed," Onslaught said blearily, although he couldn't make himself speak above a quiet whisper.

"Um." Now that it'd finally gotten through his processor that there might be a problem, Scavenger paused to fret. "Are you sure? We don't have to."

Onslaught's throat worked around the words. It took him a while to say them out loud. "Frag me."

Fret fret fret. "Would you feel better if we switched places? I'm not as good on the bottom," Onslaught's receptive equipment cried protest at the idea of losing out, but Scavenger was lost in concern for the Combaticon's welfare, "but I don't really mind. Much. I mean, I do a little, but I want this to be good for you, and if that's what you need - "

Shame wriggled through Onslaught's gut, but he said the words again. Louder, this time. "Frag me!"

"Do you want me to leave - "

"Scavenger! Shut up and plug in, or I swear I'll - "

The armlock was twice as effective when a mech tried to struggle loose. Scavenger bore down on war-ingrained reflex, and Onslaught helplessly suffered the feedback as suction cups and crystal toy turned his body into a playground of randomly activated sensor grids. The sound he made wasn't one he remembered ever making before.

Scavenger breathed, "Tell me to stop," into his audio, and Onslaught shuddered.

He didn't say stop this time.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	48. Pt 48: Predatorprey hunting

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 48:_** _"predator/prey, hunting_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Is this how you want it?" the Decepticon murmured into his neck, and Jazz shivered as a noisy inhale pointedly took in the scent of him: road asphalt, rubber tires, the dark, dried scent of burnt energon ingrained into his metal. "Do you want it like this, Autobot? Next to a busy road, just trees or a curious tourist from discovery? Is the risk of getting caught what gets you off?"

Jazz shivered again, but it was from the shrewd, cutting intelligence analyzing him rather than what the whispered rasp in his audio did to his sensor net. Although that was pleasant in a whole different way, he had to admit. "Y' didn't seem too into it when I shot y' up the afterburner," he growled back, deliberately deepening his voice to contrast Starscream's scratchy tenor. "Didn't think you'd want me runnin' much further."

Starscream snickered, and his deviously delighted smirk brushed his lips across the cheek under Jazz's visor as he drew back enough to look down at the Autobot. Jazz instantly hated the distance. "I love the chase. A little damage is worth a good hunt."

Jazz forgave him the distance between their faces as Starscream finally lowered himself over him, much larger Seeker frame almost hiding Jazz's relatively tiny groundframe from a casual observer. He blanketed Jazz in danger and hot armor that smelled of that impossible to describe blend of speed, air, ozone, and excitement. Starscream really had liked chasing him down, even if the chase had been short and more of a lead to a more appropriate area for a quick tryst.

"I'll keep that in mind," Jazz said, already thinking of better areas to run to.


	49. Pt 49: Ds

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 49:_** _"D/s_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He was the tiniest dom ever hired by the Justice Division.

Technically, it was sex work and therefore illegal. On the streets of the Decepticon capital, such regulations were enforced. Autobots were mechs who sold their bodies for labor or for whatever they were hired to do, and good Decepticons didn't hire such filth. The Justice Division made sure of it, hunting down any Decepticon foolish enough to think he could get away with shelling out money for illegal hires.

Which, on a technicality, made it _legal_ for the Justice Division to hire an Autobot. They were an internal organization. They only arrested Decepticons. Street workers and illegal immigrant labor were outside the parameters of their work. Tarn wasn't even sure they had the authority to arrest an Autobot. Kill one in pursuit of a Decepticon criminal, sure, but legally prosecute one? Probably not.

So if they couldn't arrest the Autobot, they might as well hire him as bait for the Decepticons they were after. And since working for the Justice Division was legal labor, that technically made the job legitimate. It was the kind of twisty legal logic that only a bureaucrat could dream up.

Embodied in a frame fresh out of a far filthier dream. Wow. Tarn hadn't expected his new employee to be hot.

"You're an Autobot," Kaon said when Rewind first showed up.

"Yeah," Rewind said, "but you hired me anyway."

"Let him in," Tarn said from inside, and Rewind strutted past the fuming mech to confront the head of the D.J.D.

"You're a tall one," the little Autobot said.

"You're quite small. There, all the formalities are out of the way." Tarn looked all the way down at the tiny mech, and a flash of uncertainty crossed his optics. "Your advertisement..."

"I'm a pro dom, yes; I'm a switch, no; you want to top me, denied; you think you can threaten me, get real," Rewind reeled off, sounding bored, and Tarn was been thoroughly put in his place by the end of the argument. It wasn't that Rewind couldn't get rattled. It was just that Rewind recorded and analyzed everything, so he had archives and archives to use cutting people off at the knees.

"How did he know about that?" was muttered more than once in the office whenever Rewind was around. "Nobody knows about that. I didn't even know that!"

It wouldn't surprise anyone to find out Rewind had hacked the street security cameras long ago. Blackmail was a game played in the big leagues. Rewind spoke softly and carried a big stick, and that stick had a nail stuck in it. A painful, painful sharp nail.

"Your check," Tarn grated out a week after denying the little Autobot pay.

Rewind accepted the money gracefully. "Got a call, huh?"

From Soundwave, of all mechs, and when and how Rewind had gotten the city's head of internal affairs interested in tracking the Justice Division's employee salaries was something Tarn would kill to know. "I hate you," he growled at the annoying little snitch.

"I know you do, sweetie," Rewind simpered as he checked the numbers. "See you tomorrow. And tomorrow night."

Tarn's head whipped around, appalled optics flicking around in case anyone had been standing nearby, but what could he have said if they had? The D.J.D. was staking out a nightclub tomorrow, hoping to get their tiny informant in with one of the high players for the local drug cartel, but tomorrow night -

Tomorrow night was something off the D.J.D.'s budget and making inroads into Tarn's own paycheck. Ahem. In private. Very legal. Technically. Since Rewind had a legal job and all, making him a legal worker even if he was Autobot scum.

Autobot scum with the cutest little shoulders and those pretty scrolled designs across his chest and the way he snapped those comments whenever Tarn got out of line, and he was fairly sure Helex was angling to find out the tiny dom's working rates too. The fragger better not give Helex a better deal than Tarn got.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	50. Pt 50: Ds with caring sub

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 50:_** _"Dom/sub relationships where the sub's just as taking-care-of their dom_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The Combaticons had a _special_ unit relationship. They were gestalt now, enslaved via loyalty programming and involuntary followers of the Cause, but they'd started out as a loose group of likeminded mechs more mercenary than dedicated to the Decepticons. That had caused its own problems. It'd take at least a two-part episode to go through their backstory and present all the troubles caused by their shared history, but that was the larger picture. On a more personal level, two mechs happily in a trainwreck of an abusive relationship found out via the magic of combining into Bruticus that nothing was as it appeared.

Vortex was not, in fact, a sadist forced to be a subservient punching bag because of some truly filthy blackmail held over him by Brawl. He was, in fact, a complete masochist who adored being made to grudgingly obey orders. The blackmail was merely a convenient excuse to pretend he hated Brawl even as every circuit in his body thrilled every time the tankformer pounded him facefirst into a wall. In reality, he was far too shameless to care if Brawl told all of Cybertron the tidbit of information about the Autobot base commander, the wrong set of cables, and a tremendous mistake made during an attempted hacking. Prowl would probably be more embarrassed by word getting out than Vortex, even if it got the interrogator fired for sheer incompetence.

Brawl found all this out the hard way via Bruticus. Vortex, in turn, found out that Brawl liked his relationships as simple as the tankformer's own thought processes. Straightforward and violent, that was Brawl. Add in the faint attraction and admiration dusted over Vortex's thoughts about him, and Brawl recoiled from the 'copter.

He didn't want a submissive. He wanted what he'd thought he'd had: a coercive relationship made of blackmail and hate. Brawl _liked_ humiliating the crazy whirligig Onslaught had brought onto the team. He liked pressuring Vortex into ugly interfacing wherever he managed to corner the guy. He liked being the stronger mech. He liked knowing he had a restraint Vortex couldn't fight.

Yeah, well, it turned out Vortex could have fought back the entire time. He just hadn't wanted to, and what a bummer that was.

Brawl had a simple way of thinking about stuff. The other Combaticons took a giant step back when they uncoupled from Bruticus, anticipating a screaming angry swearfest tirade at Vortex topped off by the violent fragging now permanently engraved in their shared harddrive space. Business as usual after a quick hiccup of readjusting to now-common knowledge, right? Brawl was too practical to stay rattled for long.

However, the tankformer defied all their predictions and fell into depression. Or at least a really gloomy funk. They couldn't tell.

Onslaught sent Vortex in where Autobots feared to tread. "He's **your** lover," he said, vocalizer twisting in distaste over the muted emotions Vortex had tried to hide. Eager submissive bliss was not something he'd thought Vortex capable of, and he wanted nothing to do with it now that he knew. "You deal with him."

Vortex wouldn't meet his gaze. Onslaught handed over the override code for Brawl's quarters, and the 'copter stomped off in a huff to go do something Onslaught pretended he didn't know the maniac had wanted to do for a week or better. Pretending ignorance was better than the alternative around here, lately. The Combaticons had learned far more than they'd ever known or wanted to know about each other since Bruticus first combined.

So Vortex didn't bother with the override code. He just kicked down the slagging door, busting into Brawl's quarters in a froth of quivering rotor blades, bad temper, and vulnerability he hadn't been coded to deal with in any sort of healthy manner.

"You can still hit me!" he snapped the second he was inside. "You can punch me, you can kick me, I'm even okay with tearing off parts as long as you don't pull a Swindle and sell them, so what's the problem?! Get off your aft and **do** something!" he shouted at the tankformer sitting in apathetic nonreaction on the bunk. Brawl just looked at him, dull-witted and disappointed, and Vortex threw up his hands. "Frag me! The one idiot I don't want to take apart, and you're refusing to take advantage of me - what is **wrong** with you!"

Brawl turned his face away. "Thought you were into that," he said in a rusty voice as if he'd gotten used to silence.

"What - you - oh, come on, that's not fair and you know it!" Denying a masochist what he wanted the most; the worst kind of pain Vortex could suffer, but he didn't have the patience for that kind of game tonight. He stalked forward and dropped to his knees without ceremony. He'd suffered his rotors ground under Brawl's heel enough times that just being on the floor in front of the tankformer's feet sent a flush of heat through his systems. "What do you **want**? Fraggit Brawl, just…just tell me. Tell me what to do. Give me an order. Shove me into the wall and make me open all my panels. Overload and throw me out of your room before I finish. Do whatever you want to do with me, but stop - stop **this**." He waved his hands in a helpless gesture encompassing this passive, blank loss of passion. Vortex thrived on passion, on _reaction_. Apathy gave him nothing to work with, and it frustrated him to the Pit and back.

"I don't want ya wanting it," Brawl said. He sounded as though he hadn't even known what he was feeling until the words came out.

Vortex let his helm fall forward to thunk onto one of the mech's knees. Admitting his kinks wasn't the hard part of saying this out loud. "I get off on resisting. You know it." Now he did, anyway. "You hit me like I want to be hit. You don't care, and that's what I want. I don't want to be coddled when you've got your sparkplugs off. I want to be used and tossed away, and you give me what I want. Can't you just, I don't know. Pretend?" He wanted the hard angles and cruel manipulation. And yeah, he'd gotten attached. His mistake, alright? He liked Brawl for the pain and pleasure of being bent over, face forced into the floor as he was taken and laughed at the whole time for being such a powerless glitch he wouldn't fight the humiliating position. He liked how the tankformer would kick him away afterward. He liked how Brawl never tried to make anything more out of what they had.

They were fragbuddies without the buddies part, and Vortex loved it so much he couldn't separate out the person abusing him from the abuse he craved. That unnerved Brawl something fierce. Worse, it killed his charge.

Vortex looked up at him desperately, visor wide and very consciously pleading. He knew how Brawl liked to see him. He'd been playing a part a long time.

Brawl punched him full in the face mask. It was lackluster, but Vortex let himself sprawl on the floor. He really felt like getting up and dancing, but he turned over and crawled back toward Brawl in a meek cringe, sullenness in the set of his shoulders as he drew the act around himself. "Look, I'll do what you tell me to. You don't have to hit me that hard."

"Shaddup." Brawl still wouldn't look at him, still looked tired and totally not into it, but it was a start.

Vortex could work with that. He'd coax Brawl back to life one way or another.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	51. Pt 51: Demonic possession

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 51_** ** _:_** _"demonic possession_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Ultra Magnus' hands were doing things he had most certainly not given them permission to do. To himself, which was twice as alarming. Also disappointing, as he'd always thought - insofar as he'd ever given it a thought, which he _hadn't_ \- that if he were possessed by lust he'd at last have the courage to go after someone he found attractive. If Starscream was going to take over his body and do obscene things, he should at least have the courtesy to grant Ultra Magnus a legitimate excuse to molest Rodimus Prime's spoiler.

It was downright insulting that Starscream was opening up his chest and teasing him this way. There was a fine young Prime _right down the hall_. The Decepticon ghost was doing this out of sheer spite.

Ultra Magnus sullenly ignored the overheat warnings popping up on his HUD. Pleasure throbbed slowly through his array in time with the foreign pace set on his spark. Fingers played in a rhythm he never used on himself. It was making his joints tense and fans stutter. It felt good, although he wouldn't admit it. It was also confusing, which he would admit freely. He didn't understand why Starscream would waste time playing with him this way.

"Do you find it such a strange concept that I might want you?" his own voice said, strangely raspy, and Ultra Magnus wished he could groan as someone brought his body to a quivering climax.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	52. Pt 52: Significant Power Discrepancy

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 52:_** _"_ _significant power discrepancy_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He didn't want this.

He didn't like any of them. He didn't want to join them. He would frag them if asked, or at least some of them, but that wasn't intimacy. That was expediency, an accepted way to smooth over the more awkward personality clashes among soldiers in a unit. Inferfacing bypassed forging an understanding or relationship via conversation and time. Frag a fellow Autobot, and it made a faux bridge between two mechs. There was no substance to that belief, but so long as there was belief, it made further ventures into friendly behavior optional.

He didn't like Prowl. He hated Ironhide. He found Optimus Prime distasteful. What he felt for Sunstreaker defied words. The idea of combining with any of them, much less all of them, compacted his tanks into a nauseated ball of overwhelming emotion. The choice was taken from him. His free will snapped, broken by some ancient relic's magnetic power like a sheet of glass under the heavy, clumsy weight of Optimus Maximus' foot.

Mirage withdrew into himself as much as possible, traumatized beyond coherent thought at what was being done to him. Ironhide drawled through his vocalizer. Prowl's schemes left sticky stains tracked across his spark. Optimus Prime was too much to access, too much to stand against, too much to tolerate, burning out the limits of his mind and using his body like it was a tool, a glove for the hand of the greater good, and Mirage didn't want this, he didn't agree to this, he refused to become part of this.

Yet from their forcibly conjoined bodies rose Optimus Maximus.

Inside the gestalt, Mirage fought to stay himself, and he failed. It echoed, hurt for hurt, and his shocked violation found company. There was no separate part of him to feel the surprise sheltered from anyone else's knowledge. He was surprised, and Sunstreaker felt his surprise, and Mirage felt his nervous resignation in return.

Sunstreaker expected to be rejected. He understood exactly why Mirage loathed him beyond words. He didn't blame the noblemech for what he felt. If anything, he accepted the feelings blasted into him, wrapping around the injuries those emotions marked on his spark, and Mirage cringed as the pain sang through them all. Pain inflicted on one became pain for them all.

This, too, Mirage didn't want.

But Sunstreaker knew, knew it better than Mirage had ever known this lesson could be known, that what a mech wanted didn't matter. Bodily autonomy could be stripped away like nothing. Mental walls could be torn down. A spark could be opened for use, put on display like a freakshow. And afterward, Sunstreaker's tired, wounded, reopened memories warned, nobody would help. Nobody had any sympathy for the consequences of violation. Too much had happened for this particular shock to register with anyone else.

Slag happened, Mirage knew. The war went on, Sunstreaker knew. Now Mirage knew it, too.

There wasn't anything he could do about it.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	53. Pt 53: Brainwashing-Reprogramming

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 53:_** _"_ Reprogramming/Brainwashing _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Come here," Bonecrusher said casually, beckoning, and the Autobot obeyed in blank-opticked silence. He turned the emotionless face up to inspect. "This is gonna be our sixth? Frag me."

Scavenger pinched the red chevron between two fingers, wiggling it back and forth. "I've collected sturdier helms. I think we should replace this before it breaks."

Hook glanced up before returning to sorting his surgical tray. "It stays. I can replace much of his interior workings to bring him up to our standards, but he has to remain outwardly the same. The Autobots are marginally intelligent. They'll notice if he shows up with a completely different helm." He made an impatient gesture, pointing at the table. "Drone! Lay down," he ordered.

Prowl obeyed without question, walking over and sitting on the table before lying down to stare at the ceiling as if he didn't see it. He didn't seem to see any of them. Bombshell's mind control had him so far under he wouldn't even know what had happened tonight. To Hook's knowledge, Bombshell had him believing he went to an empty apartment, refueled, recharged, and got up with mechanical efficiency in the morning. The fact that he wasn't fighting the implanted suggestion of memories told Hook everything he needed to know about this Autobot. Prowl was _content_ with the routine.

Ugh. Dull, machine-brained goody-goody with his chevron permanently welded to Optimus Prime's sanctimonious aft.

"This is going to suck," Long Haul summed up for all of them.

Mixmaster stepped up beside Hook to look down at the prone mech. "He is rather pretty," he said thoughtfully. One of his hands strayed to rest on an unnaturally still hood. "We can always repaint him later."

"He doesn't deserve our colors," Scavenger muttered, resentful.

"Mm." Mixmaster cocked his head. "I wonder if the obedience will last past our first combine." Engine purring, he tapped his fingers on Prowl's hood. "Open up, pretty."

Suddenly interested, Long Haul and Bonecrusher sat up. Hook blinked, then smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. Had Prowl been aware, he might have preferred the tray of surgical tools pushed aside in favor of something else that night.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	54. Pt 54: Gangbang

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 54:_** _"gangbang_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He knew them down to their cores after that first forced combine.

Unfortunately.

"Stop this," Hook said as he forced his jack into a clenched port that shrilled pain through an oversensitive network. "You're being foolish. What purpose does this serve?" Pleasure shuddered through him, electric bliss as his stronger, dominate systems pulsed charge through the weaker half of the interface, the greater voltage shocking Prowl in a way the Autobot couldn't enjoy. They knew he couldn't, because his pain, hate, and helpless rage cycled back through into Hook through the wide-open gestalt links.

Bonecrusher held Prowl's wrists down, half-crushing them into the table to hold him open and helpless to Hook as the surgeon hunched over in grunting concentration, energy rushing and rising toward the inevitable crest of bliss and resetting breakers. "Let it go," Bonecrusher said as he watched Hook. The wrists he held were bigger than they'd been before the stealthy rebuild, but they were still relatively frail. Compared to the rest of the Constructicons, Prowl was small. Weak. His circuits held a lower charge, his struts weren't as dense, and his armor was designed for silence and speed instead of brute strength.

Mixmaster held down one knee, keeping Prowl from kicking. Kicking wouldn't stop Hook or even harm him, but the point was to utterly control the Autobot. Prowl was a helpless victim to their brutal violation of him, and holding his leg down and spread wide emphasized who was in control. Scavenger held his other leg by the foot, hands nearly crushing it in his grip. Scavenger was the only one who hadn't attempted to reason with Prowl at some point. He kept his face turned away from their sixth unhappily.

Long Haul shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. The hauler had already had his turn plugging Prowl, the tip of his larger equipment jamming into the too-small socket despite Prowl's hiss of pain. It wasn't his first time taking their involuntary team leader, and from the cold purpose in the back of his spark, it wouldn't be the last time.

Hook overloaded, back arching and a tiny, quavering cry coming from his lips as Prowl suffered the harsh shock to delicate equipment that was never supposed to be abused this way. The way the Constructicons had abused him for months before they merged, back in the time before they felt what he really was and he'd seen down into them. They were Decepticons, and some of the worst of their kind. He'd seen that in their minds. They didn't regret raping him. They'd enjoyed having him in every way they could. He'd spent months under Bombshell's control, and they didn't regret what they'd done to him.

But they felt what he felt, now, the gestalt links blown wide open and every bit of pain and terror shoved into their minds as if they felt it firsthand. Hook stepped back from between Prowl's legs, mouth twisted into a pained grimace and visor refusing to look at any of his team. Long Haul reluctantly stepped forward to take his place, cable in hand no matter that he didn't feel arousal. The one being forced here wasn't Prowl. The roles had been reversed. They were the ones helpless as they were fragged against their will, and they quailed as he commanded them to continue.

He knew them too well to have mercy on himself, not if his pain meant revenge.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	55. Pt 55: Noncon

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 55:_** _"noncon_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Whatever the consequences might be in the future, the present was clear enough: the Neutrals holding them prisoner had all the power, and they were drunk on it. They tortured their captives for the mere pleasure of finding what made them scream the loudest. They weren't trying to dig out information. If the pain was for interrogation, the prisoners might have hunkered down in stubborn silence, finding a grim resolution to endure in the noble cause of protecting what they knew. Even Starscream didn't crack under interrogation, after all. Withstanding pain for a purpose was bearable.

Agony for the sake of amusement wasn't as easy to sit there and take. There was no angle to catch and nothing to bargain over. There was no point to the beatings but further suffering. There was no reason to stay silent, nothing to protect, and oddly enough, that weakened the Decepticons' resolve. If they weren't being kept alive for information, it took the hope for survival right out of them.

The guards threw what was left of Thrust back into the low cage they used as a cell after the jet ceased garbling pleas. They liked their begging coherent, it seemed.

The guards took their time selecting the next victim. Forced to their knees by the height of the bars, the battered Decepticons inside the cage avoided optic contact. Usually someone would be too proud or foolish to keep their helm turned away, but Thrust's screams had gone on a particularly long time, and the flash of stripped wires spitting electricity had been quite violent. Even Hook bowed his head, lips pressed into a mulish frown as he averted his visor.

They hauled him out anyway. He managed to kick one of them in the face, stasis cuffs or not.

The kicked mech rubbed his jaw, scowling, and a chill shot down the surgeon's backstruts as a wicked smirk replaced the scowl. "Put him on the table."

Hook struggled, but they stretched him out flat on his face, hips hanging off the end and crane arm crawling in involuntary fear. There wasn't much question what they had planned for him, positioning him this way. "My team will crush every one of you," he hissed in quiet anger. The cuffs sapped his energy, but hatred gave him the strength to heave as someone slapped his aft. "You're dead mechs walking."

The mech he'd kicked walked into sight carrying a spike and mallet, and the chill became a solid freeze. Hook stiffened, vocalizer buzzing white noise and visor wary. Crawling fear turned over into terror as the mech nodded to a fellow Neutral. These mechs had nothing to lose. Every bit of enjoyment they wrang from the captured Decepticons was just a last vengeance to savor. Hook curled his hands into fists, but there was no strength in his cables. The Neutrals flattened his hands to the table with pathetic ease.

"This is how it's going to be," the kicked mech said as he positioned the spike over the back of Hook's right hand. "You're going to scream for us, one way or another. Got it?"

Hook wanted to look away, but he couldn't. "Burn in the Pit."

The mallet came down.

Three holes in, and he opened his panels. He didn't have anything to protect but himself, and he couldn't take the pain for his own sake.

And yes, he did scream for them.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	56. Pt 56: Pedophilia

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 56:_** _"(Bestiality) Pedophilia_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The Decepticons liked humans.

Like, _liked_ humans. Yeah. Like that. _That way_ kind of liked. Like _getting off on_ kind of liked. It was more a lust than a like, but good luck prying that admission from any of them.

Nobody was ashamed of it, precisely, because everyone had it to one degree or another, but, well, yeah. It wasn't talked about openly, okay? It was a thing on Earth about Earth that didn't travel off Earth because it belonged where it had started: on Earth. None of the Decepticons on Earth ever discussed it with a Decepticon off Earth. They didn't talk about it with Decepticons _on_ Earth, yet somehow word got around.

It was the altmodes, see? With the exception of those with beast modes, the Decepticons had scanned altmodes originally created for and by humans. Every detail of their exteriors mimicked the vehicles humans drove, operated, used in war and daily life. Superficial details inside them had shifted around, too, allowing them to pass as Earth-made even if a human popped their hoods. The transcan altered the Decepticons' appearance, which was fairly normal camouflage, but by rooting changes past the surface level, certain things had wedged into their programming. There wasn't any way to pry that out of their deep code once the minute details settled in.

There was no denying that humans _fit_ them. The Decepticons were their altmodes, mechanical beings as much machine as living creature, and their altmodes yawned empty. The jets had lighted controls in empty cockpits. The Constructicons had seat harnesses designed for another species' safety. The Stunticons had luxuriously upholstered interiors for no one's benefit. The shuttles kept their cabins and cargo areas pressurized despite admitting they had no idea why it felt more comfortable.

Something was missing from inside almost all of them, and that something was humankind. The emptiness was a void, the void craved to be filled, and since they were on Earth anyway…

So by the time the Combaticons ended up on Earth, the human fetish among the Decepticons was alive and well. Hidden, perhaps, but flourishing in a discreet, thriving underground that Vortex nosed out with little problem. It wasn't as though it was a secret. It was a total social embarrassment to talk about in public, as the Combaticons quickly discovered, but they figured out the round-about methods of acquiring what they wanted soon enough. They had to. The newbie combiner team had begun to feel the empty pull.

They were made for humans. Their internal parts were perfectly designed for tiny human hands to hold, their interiors deliberately shaped to accommodate small human forms, their altmode reflexes triggered by buttons meant to be pushed by the frail fingertips of humankind. The Combaticons had been brought back online in forms that belonged to another race, and oh no, oh yes, oh _frag them_ but they were starting to feel it.

The good news was that none of the Decepticons were prudes. At this point in the war, transforming to altmode was halfway a proposition outside of battle. Pairing up had to be done with one mech in each mode to get the circuit connection right, but being on Earth stuck them in their altmodes pretty much everywhere outside the base. It'd been a while since they'd last been on a planet where their altmodes were actual disguises, and they were out of practice thinking about transforming in that light. It left a lot of them halfway revved up in altmode as they did normal, mundane reconnaissance among the humans - who were an excruciatingly tactile species. Primus spare the Decepticons' sparks, did the humans touch a lot. They touched _everything_. Each other! Themselves! Objects!

And them. The humans loved to touch them. The humans liked to _feel_. Show them a handgun, or a sleek F-15, or even a frontend loader, and out came the instinct to pick up, to stroke, to run delicate fingertips over broad planes of metal plating and fine seams where the metal joined.

Touching someone else's altmode was pretty much getting it on even before someone popped a cable hatch. Xenophobia slammed headlong into altered deep code the first time a human opened a reluctantly unlocked door to climb inside Scrapper, and the other Decepticons strained their sensors watching him for a reaction.

*"What's it like, mech?"*

*"Is it all squishy and gross?"*

*"Ha! You're getting organic all inside you!"*

*"Shut up,"* Scrapper had barked into the open commline, bizarrely serious, and everyone had shut up out of sheer shock that he sounded so dead calm with an alien in his seat. *"I'm busy."*

He'd refused to speak for the rest of the time the human drove him around the construction site.

*"…he's probably **this far** from tossing his tanks."*

*"Heh, right, I would be, too."*

*"Awwwww, poor widdle 'Structie's got sticky hands everywhere in his innards."*

The other Decepticons had laughed right up until Scrapper transformed later that day, masked face somehow broadcasting the glowing satisfaction of a mech fragged long and hard. Even the other Constructicons had stared speechlessly as he swaggered past, fulfillment trailing in his wake.

Well, then.

No, they didn't immediately begin fragging humans. It wasn't physically possible, for one thing, although Vortex had to make some inquiries into the repairbay's publically available health files before he found a warning tucked at the bottom of a posted notice about ' _Don't try it, glitches'._ Which probably meant someone else had. That couldn't have been fun for anyone involved.

Poking around some more turned up a couple of extremely dry dissertations by Hook on the subject. Vortex glared at the rest of his team - "You had better appreciate this." - and read through them. It took a while. Hook had the astounding ability to dress up some truly scandalous information in the universe's most boring narrative tone, making interface-related research on humans so dull Brawl took to thwacking Vortex on the rotorblades to keep him awake. If Vortex hadn't caught on that Hook was doing it on purpose, he'd have given up the first hour.

However, the Combaticons had questions, questions that the Decepticons on Earth scowled at them for daring to ask out loud. Reading up on what they wanted to know was the next best thing.

And it came down to what they'd already suspected: substituting a human for the other half of an interfacing provided no charge but worked nonetheless. A human excited base programming in a way no other Decepticon could, making overload a deep, code-level satisfaction instead of an electric release. All those little parts and pieces of their altmodes made to be used by humankind cycled rich, pleasure-laced feedback through them when actually used by the soft, clever hands of a human.

Even if most of the Decepticons hadn't been jonesing for humankind, the rich pulse of tactile overload addicted them anyway.

Vortex sat back once he'd figured it out, visor disturbed. Intrigued, too. "You guys aren't going to believe this…"

Onslaught and Blast Off exchanged a look mirrored by Brawl and Swindle. Swindle didn't seem surprised once Vortex laid it out, but, well, Swindle. Swindle had a _special_ kind of relationship with all of his customers no matter the species. He could get off on money changing hands even if the hands were tiny and fleshy.

For the other Combaticons, it was a gamechanger. They didn't suddenly gain acceptance among the Decepticons, of course, but knowing what the frag was going on gave them the key to the coded language used in the common room, the inexplicable absences of mechs on certain days suddenly explained, the strange behaviors among the ranks no longer strange at all.

Er, no, the Insecticons were still fairly strange. They had beast modes. What was their excuse?

But Octane's ever-growing business network in the Middle East based on the size of his harem made _so_ much more sense, now. "I always liked the top-heavy frametypes," he said absently the next time Vortex slipped in a question about it.

"Everybody's noticed your posters," Vortex said dryly. He was looking at one right now. Octane had a collection of vintage Golden Age pin-ups he kept pasted on his interior walls. The fixation on femme frametypes had always struck Vortex as weird, but in the context of Earth, why not? "So you're, uh, married?"

"Nine times over, now. The local oil magnates use their daughters to seal business deals, and I figured it's as good a way to get a detailing done as any." Octane flexed his wings, and smugness rolled off him. Anyone who dealt with him noticed the shiny perfection of his polish. Many hands made light work, apparently, and many human hands made the mech get off quite frequently if that's what that wing-waggle meant.

Good on him, Vortex supposed. Marrying aliens seemed like pushing the fetish a bit far, but he didn't seriously think Octane meant any of the vows he mouthed at the ceremonies. Plus it had earned him a harem full of humans eager to please him, so that was a decent trade-off.

The other Decepticons had to be more covert in their human-seeking. Vortex nudged here, gossiped there, and eventually pieced together some of the Earth base's, ah, _extracurricular_ activities.

The Constructicons had it bad for burly men in tough jeans and hardhats. They liked to be used in build sites, calloused hands pawing their wheels and heavy bodies slouched in their seats. Mixmaster and Hook both sought smokers, Mixmaster for the smell and Hook for the guilty pleasure of watching humans getting their nicotine fix. Vortex had no idea how that worked. All he knew was that steel-toed boots left distinctive tracks on running boards, and Scrapper _beamed_ afterglow when he got some.

Megatron occasionally visited a shooting range in Las Vegas. Vortex wouldn't touch that information if he was paid to, thoroughly unnerved, but Onslaught seemed far more interested than Vortex wanted to know anything about. Just - loyalty programming was the Pit. No. He didn't want to know, and he wasn't getting involved.

The Stunticons collectively lusted after rich middle-aged men and busty young women wearing very little clothing. It took Vortex a while to connect that to how the whole combiner team vanished from the base whenever a car show was anywhere in a major American or European city. Midage crisis and models showed up in scores at the shows, as far as he understood. He didn't know for certain, but the magazines he found showed scantily-clad women draped all over cars, and the target audience seemed to be men eager to buy those cars. Or acquire the women. Maybe both? But either way, it provided the Stunticons with a plethora of hands and soft skin pressed to their hoods.

Motormaster being the sole exception, as he disappeared into the highway system while his subordinates were off being fondled by humans. He showed up at rest stops, truckdrivers behind his wheel and odd accessories from roadside attractions gradually cluttering up his dashboard.

Vortex found his taste in humans kind of sick - why did the humans Motormaster pick up always _smell_ so bad? - but he didn't have room to talk. His own tastes were questionable, at best. It came down to personal preference in the end. Earth had a variety of humans, all the colors and kinds the Decepticons could possibly want, and experimentation ran rampant. Vortex was no different when it came to narrowing down the selection. It'd taken some trial and error, but one of the benefits of being stuck in a gestalt with Swindle was the ability to purchase almost anything.

He'd tried women. He'd tried men. He'd tried everything in between.

He liked Air Force personnel. He liked hookers no matter their gender. Hookers told they were performing for a hidden camera would hump his seats, sprawl out on his floor, and even lick his knobs suggestively. They were unrestrained, almost wild, and while he didn't care for the visuals, the _feel_ of all that skin against his control panel, in his seats, and against his windshield was beyond priceless. He had the one who could deep-throat his stick on speed-dial, because…yeah.

But Vortex liked little boys the best. Ages 5-12 were his favorite. Any older than that, and they subconsciously remembered manners; any younger, and they couldn't climb into his seats by themselves. Girls were okay, too, but human parents seemed to train their females at a young age that they weren't supposed to like aircraft. Big machines weren't supposed to excite them. Boys, on the other hand, learned that giant helicopters were the coolest thing on planet Earth. Set loose inside Vortex's altmode, they were active bundles of running feet and grabbing hands, and it was great. It was so much better than the calculated show put on by paid whores. Little boys jerked on his throttle, pushed all of his buttons, tied themselves up in his safety harnesses with total concentration as they tried to get the buckles right. They pretended to blow enemies up. They bounced up and down in his seats as they made sound effects and narrated battles, using every part of him that moved to fit their play.

Primus, he loved the little boys. It was constant touch, touch, touch.

"Come on it," Vortex said in his warmest voice as the blank-faced nanny Swindle hired to ferry children from orphanages lifted the latest child up into his hold. The small boy looked around uncertainly, his chubby cheeks shiny with the remnants of candy given to him during the trip to keep him complacent. Vortex chuckled. The sugar rush would hit soon, and he was looking forward to it. "Don't be scared. Would you like to play with me?"

Wide eyes looked at the slack cargo netting on the helicopter's walls. "Play what?"

Vortex lit his control panel up, flickering the lights like a lure. "I need a pilot. Want to fly me?"

The lights and buttons - so many buttons to push, and each push of a miniscule fleshy fingertip went straight to ready interface equipment - enticed the boy into his cockpit. The peculiar excited look of happy disbelief washed over the human's little face. "Can I..?"

Almost too old, Vortex noted with an internal frown, and he made a mental note to ask Swindle for younger boys from now on. He liked them to start playing without asking permission. "Of course you can."

Soft hands began exploring his controls. Wondering eyes looked at all the knobs. Vortex wanted more enthusiasm - definitely too old for his taste, but the kid would do for today - and he waggled his throttle in invitation. The boy grinned, wrapping both hands around it, and Vortex just about _died_.

Little hands, soft hands, hands that moulded perfectly to the grip on his throttle, fingers sliding into the grooves and thumb bumping at the button at the end.

"That's it," he said in a choked voice. "Do you like rotorblades? You can climb up to look at them later."

The grin had turned into a gape-toothed smile, brilliantly excited, and the boy did that jump in place thing kids did that Vortex had come to utterly adore. Feet on his floor felt wonderful, but the pattering dance of moving sneakers felt as though it went directly into his spark. "Can I look now? Can I?"

Why not? "Alright," he said, indulging himself. "There's a staircase set up outside you can use to get on top." The boy immediately darted for the door, and Vortex chuckled again. Usually the feel of fingers wriggling into his rotor array was something he saved for last, but then the boy would come back inside him smelling of lubricant and grease, the fresh clean scent of a mechanic crossed with the candy-sweet smell of an excited child, little hands smearing slick skin over metal as the boy turned all his knobs and pushed all his buttons. He'd have to hold on firmer to get a good grip. Maybe he'd wipe his tiny fingers off on Vortex's seats. He'd touch and touch and Vortex would have to stop talking at some point as it became too much, his vocalizer fritzing to static as overload crept up on him under the enthusiastic, innocent molestation of his every nook and cranny.

Oh, yes. Yes, Vortex liked the little boys.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	57. Pt 57: Bestiality

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 57:_** _"_ _Bestiality_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He hated it.

He hated it beyond words or comprehension.

Sunstreaker threw the car magazine across the room, engine roaring disgust at the center of his own being. Bob flinched underneath his berth, but Sunstreaker could spare the processor power from self-loathing to comfort his poor pet. It wasn't Bob's fault. He wasn't angry at the bug.

He couldn't even say he was angry. Furious at humanity, yeah. He hated Earth, hated it to the point that he'd sold out to Starscream for the chance to exterminate humanity, and of course he regretted selling out to a Decepticon but that didn't change the fact that he hated humanity.

Yet Hunter still whispered in the back of his thoughts. The man had merged with his mind, lived through him and Sunstreaker through him in turn, and the car magazine was an import from Earth. Before Hunter, Sunstreaker was capable of appreciating the sleek curves and polished shine of the new car models pictured. Post-Hunter, however, a sick twist had come to that simple altmode-lust.

In many of the pictures in the magazine, scantily-clad humans posed on the cars. Humans with curves of their own, pouches of flesh barely covered by cloth, their mouths stretched in smiles lined by lurid shades of red that Sunstreaker inexplicably wanted to touch. Wanted to rub the color onto his fingertips, wanted to push their shirts up to see what their chests looked like under the fabric, and he wanted…he wanted…

He wanted them. He wanted the female humans, in all their alien glory, posed on gorgeous cars. He wanted the metal and the lace like a sickness named desire.

He hated it.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	58. Pt 58: Robots

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 58:_** _"Robots_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Carly loved her husband, she really did, and Spike knew she did. He loved her, too. They just didn't, y'know, sleep together.

They tried, they truly did. Everyone said young people had nothing on the mind but sex, so Spike had tried his clumsy best to hit on every girl he ever crossed paths with, but cars were so much easier to deal with. He was _happy_ repairing cars. Being a mechanic was simple: diagnose the problem, replace the broken parts, solve the issue. There was something intrinsically satisfying in the click of a part shunting home.

Carly felt much the same about her mechanical engineering degree. She loved learning, she loved figuring out parts and pieces, and she absolutely adored the design process. No matter how mundane the problem, she came more alive than ever when solving it. Spike didn't fit into that aspect of hers. He was practical, solid, and had a high school degree that left him out of much of her world. He voted Republican for years, for crying out loud.

But they had a connection through the Autobots, and that seemed like a convenient solution to their mutual problem of not caring about sex. Other people were obsessed by it and told them there was something wrong with them if they didn't pretend to be as caught up in attraction to T&A or good teeth or whatever the latest fad was.

Don't get them wrong: sex happened. They tried. Daniel resulted, and neither of them regretted him, but they both came to the silent, relieved agreement that they'd fulfilled their social obligation. A child was the visible sign of squishy, sweaty, unpleasantly slick sex that the world pressured for. Now they didn't have to suffer anymore.

So Daniel grew up with parents who laughed together, loved each other, and banged on the hoods of particular Autobots in an overly familiar way only certain other humans ever recognized. He knew Raoul as the uncle out to the world, bold and sneering, and Astoria as the aunt surrounded by delicately scandalized speculation, but his parents slipped right under the radar.

Up until the day he walked in on his mother with her shirt half undone, First Aid's thumb fortunately covering her nipple right at that moment, and shrieked, "We can **do** that?!"

Carly and First Aid exchanged a glance. It was a ' _you_ have The Talk with him' look.

Daniel worked his mouth for a second. A thousand hints finally fell into place, things said to him in passing since he'd turned sixteen that he hadn't realized meant something. "Oh my God. Oh my God." First Aid looked concerned, his hand starting to move, but Carly put her hand on his thumb as if to keep him from interfering. Which was a good thing, because Daniel whirled to run out of the room with a dawning look of happiness splashed all over his face. "Roddy!"

"Knew he took after me," Carly said in satisfaction.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	59. Pt 59: Monster-Robot Dick

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 59:_** _"monster/robot dick (Plug-n-play_ ) _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Amigo, I like you, but when you said sex I thought you meant something else," Raoul said, and if his eyes hadn't been showing so much white around the irises, Tracks might have teased him.

Quite frankly, the Autobot was worried about how pasty pale his friend had gone. Raoul always shaded whiter in the winter, but it was mid-June. Plus he hadn't seen a human break into a sweat like that since Carly took Spike engagement ring shopping.

"Do you need to sit down?" he asked carefully.

"Yeeeeeah, maybe so." Smiling weakly, Raoul sank down into a crouch. His hands rose to bury in the hair at his temples, and in the shelter between them, he muttered something in the singsong cadence of a prayer. Tracks had heard it often enough from Raoul's grandaunt that he sort of felt that he should know the words by spark even if he didn't understand Spanish.

"I don't feel that God needs to protect you from me," he said, choosing his words after some deliberation. "I...can put my equipment away if it would make you feel more comfortable?"

A bray of laughter broke the hush, and Raoul's shoulders straightened even as a flush of embarrassment banished his pallor. "Hey, man, your 'equipment' puts mine to shame. I'm just not used to thinking about alien pija, alright? I thought, uh," his blush deepened, "you had, uh, shit. I don't know. A plug."

Tracks stared at him blankly, trying to picture that. "I see." No, he really didn't.

The human squirmed, far more embarrassed by his assumption than the reality looming over his head. "I don't go around asking the 'Cons to whip it out! For all I know, you machines get off in electrical sockets."

"We're not machines - "

"I know, I know!" He finally let go of his hair, throwing his hands up in the air instead. "Why you gotta be like this, man? I don't know if I can, uhhh." His eyes slid away from the alien dick jutting hard and straight from Track's groin. "That don't even seem physically possible."

Tracks stared at him a little longer. Raoul avoided looking up at him some more.

"So you were fine with doing unknown kinky alien sex with me using a toaster cord and electrical equipment?" the Autobot asked eventually.

Raoul coughed into his hand. "I practiced for it, amigo."

Into the silence following that admission came the betraying whirr of a robot's fans dumping scorching hot air. "You may have given me a previously unknown fetish," Tracks said unsteadily.

The human finally looked, really looked, at the massive dick overhead, and his eyes were very wide, reflecting it in the light of kindled lust. "Me too, man. Me too."

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	60. Pt 60: Plug-and-Play

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 60:_** _"Plug and play_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Murmured endearments and gentle caresses weren't Sunstreaker's style. When he wanted someone, he went right for the endgoal.

"Not much for foreplay, huh?" Whirl grunted. His face wasn't much for expressions, but anyone who knew him would have seen surprise written all over his body language. Of course, they might have had trouble reading anything through the squeeze of Sunstreaker's hands on particularly telltale areas. "Good, 'cause unnnhh…" The chopper faded out a bit as sharp teeth targeted where gun barrels slid under cockpit. "'Cause…not so…yeah…"

Sunstreaker left grooves the shape of his canines in the barrels, but Whirl wasn't protesting. Whirl talked big during the preliminaries, he'd noticed. Wasn't coherent enough for snark when a mech went straight for his hatches, however, and Sunstreaker had them open with cables unwinding before Whirl gathered the processor power to return the prep. Sunstreaker ignored his fumbling and kept molesting the exposed sockets. Whirl made some pretty interesting noises when tongued to quivering, he found.

Licking him stopped Whirl's attempts to hold onto Sunstreaker's plugs. The chopper didn't dare try holding onto thin, delicate jacks with his big pinchers. Not when there was a tongue stuffed up his socket teasing the socket roof in brief flicks of hot moisture and breath.

"Will you just…get on with it?" Whirl whined, trying desperately to make a demand of a plea, but the betraying wibble of his engine underlined the weakness of his voice.

That was fine with Sunstreaker. "Let's do this." Grabbing a firm handhold on one gun, he slid all the way up the length of the shivering ex-Wrecker and clamped sharp teeth onto his _antenna_ as he slammed the first plug home.

Whirl's back arched so hard he slagging near folded in half backward. Sunstreaker held on and reached for the second cable.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	61. Pt 61: Extreme Penetration

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 61:_** _"Extreme penetration._ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"That is not supposed to go there," Ratchet said in his most unimpressed voice. An irritated glance from Grapple cued him to shut up and close the door, and the medic wisely chose to stay on the side of said door that might need his services momentarily. Even with Hoist present, another pair of hands couldn't hurt.

Plus, he wasn't about to miss the show.

Sunstreaker didn't seem to be in any pain, at least. Even as Ratchet watched, the golden frontliner rolled his head to the side, nuzzling into the hand Wheeljack held over his helm vents. The engineer had been checking his ventilation rate, but he indulged Sunstreaker's need for contact. It was rare from this particular mech. Wheeljack pet his helm in long, slow strokes, and Sunstreaker arched like a blissful felinoid under the caress.

The motion rolled his lower body in sinuous, fluid writhing that not-so-coincidentally rocked him further down the barrel of Perceptor's altmode. His thighs, strong and broad, made a deceptively silky silver-pure _shiiiiiiing_ sound as the highly polished inside surfaces rubbed up and down the microscope. Ratchet's mouth went dry as he took in just how much of the scientist was up inside Sunstreaker. Even as he watched, Perceptor turned his knobs just enough to pop them past Sunstreaker's rim, and the gold mech jerked and relaxed in a sudden spasm that slid the microscope all the way in.

Ratchet licked his lips, absently restarting his stalled ventilation system. Grapple murmured something. Hoist laid his sensor-laden hand on Sunstreaker's lower torso as if measuring depth.

"Commencing scan," a muffled voice said, and Sunstreaker moaned.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	62. Pt 62: Sounding

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 62:_** _"_ sounding _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Every once and a while, a medic got lucky and one of these maintenance appointments dropped into his lap. Give him the right mech, and this could make his day.

"I need to stick this," Ratchet said not unkindly as he brandished the long, thin bristle brush, "up that." He pointed at the open intake. "The tube's clogged. This is the only way to clear it."

Sideswipe flung an arm over his optics. "Oh, Primus."

"I'm sorry," Ratchet said, not sorry at all. Yep, this was the right mech, and today was a good day.

He positioned the tip of the brush over the intake, smiled, and began to push. The pinprick hole was definitely not designed to have a brush pushed through it. The tube beyond it wasn't, either. A squeal broke from his poor patient as the brush popped in.

"Shhh," Ratchet crooned. Sideswipe shivered violently, arm covering his optics but mouth quivering from the overwhelming sensation of bristles scraping deliciously down the length of the tube to the clog. Ratchet hummed to himself as he nudged the tip against the blockage. "There it is. Now stay still." He began to stir the brush handle in tiny motions, his other hand massaging the tube around it. He had to be cautious but firm. The goal was to scrape the clog away in small increments, not push through it.

Harsh panting preceded an increasingly garbled rendition of Ratchet's name. "Ratchet! Ratcheeengh! Raaaa-ah-ah-Ratchet! Ratchet-et-et-ahhhh ah oh please RatchEEAAHT!"

A very good day.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	63. Pt 63: Egglaying

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 63:_** _"_ _Egglaying_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

There wasn't much about beast modes that could give Snap Trap the willies. For Primus' sake, his own altmode had a code-deep preference for living food. As in, fuel processed from still-living creatures. Cannibalism, in Cybertronian terms, which used to be something he hedged around admitting until the war made it one of his battlefield dossier's major features. He wasn't near the same level as those nasty-aft Terrorcons - they prided themselves on low fueling requirements due to their scavenging off the dead (or alive) - but yeah. Snap Trap liked his food still squirming.

So he really had no room to speak when it came to beast mode quirks, in all honesty. That didn't mean he could face all the oddities of his team without the urge to cringe.

Like Nautilator. As if it wasn't enough he had an unfortunate vox box range, the mech was no smarter than a box of nails. On top of that, his beast mode was female.

Look, Snap Trap didn't know the hows or whyfores behind altmode compatibility. He'd once asked Nautilator if he was a femme because of the beast mode and had promptly been the recipient of the world's most quizzical look right before being subjected to a lecture on why adaptive/adoptive genitalia had no impact on core programming. Of all the times for Nautilator to become a subject matter specialist…

Anyway, the female beast mode only became important under very specific circumstances. Every one of the Seacons responded to instinctive pulls sometimes, but Nautilator reacted to a certain combination of water temperature and sunlight in the weirdest possible way. It was a way that inevitably left Snap Trap grossed out.

He winced as the lobster at the wetlock shook water off, scattering eggs from under a tail that immediately clamped close as Nautilator caught sight of him. Nautilator curled his tail under himself, peering up at his gestalt commander in open suspicion for a moment before logic caught up with primitive instinct. Snap Trap just tried not to step on the disgustingly squishy globules. There were several hundred tucked under Nautilator's tail. Ugh.

"Clean this up!" he barked at the lobster, then pivoted on his heel and fled the reproductive mess. Organics. So gross.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	64. Pt 64: Oviposition

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 64:_** _"Oviposition_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"I..."

Fulcrum's face scrunched up as the garrote around his neck throttled a little tighter. Misfire made a small noise, already up on the tips of his feet and teetering. Crankcase's face seemed to have frozen again, but the kicking of his feet betrayed his desperation.

Krok swallowed hard and shot another look at Spinister. "You're sure?" he hissed yet again. Third time's a charm, right? Right?

Spinister struggled against his own bonds but spared a shrug. "You got a spot for it, what with the inactive T-cog. It's not medically advisable, but - "

Too much useless information, not enough time! "But you're sure it'll work?!" Air wheezed to a stop as Misfire was hoisted up to strangle, and Krok lunged forward. "I offer myself as a host!"

The execution...stopped. It didn't reverse. Misfire still twisted midair, legs now kicking futilely for purchase as he slowly overheated without air circulation to cool him in the dense humidity of the hive's nest. Crankcase's visor flickered erratically as his processor heated toward meltdown, his own legs twitching more than they kicked now. Fulcrum, however, shivered unharmed with both feet on the ground, and jewel-faceted Insecticon optics stared from around the chamber at Krok.

He couldn't tell what they were thinking. He didn't have time to wonder if they were contemplating his lapse of sanity. Krok plowed into the silence with frantic intent. "I can carry your Queen egg to term inside my chest, below my spark. She'll be warm and protected. She can even...feed off my lines," he said, forcing himself not to shudder, "and grow to full strength inside me. I can pledge our ship and, er, ourselves as protection." Unsaid was the inherent assumption that they'd do a better job than the last guards, as the Scavengers had pretty much accidentally assassinated the old Queen and her Elite Guard just by taking a walk.

Really, if it hadn't been his team's necks being cinched, Krok would kind of understand the whole execution thing. Some accidents couldn't be excused by an apology or Misfire's sheepish, "Oops?"

Sometimes it took volunteering to host a parasitic egg for a vengeful hive.

Three afts thumped to the dirt floor as a calculating shimmer glistened off the Insecticons' many optics. Crankcase groaned. Misfire coughed. Fulcrum had probably just fainted. "Your offer is accepted," buzzed from around them, and Krok braced himself for an immediate future of something thick and hard inserted where he really didn't want it. Just because he had a hole didn't mean it was meant to be filled.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	65. Pt 65: Passionate Lip-Play

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 65:_** _"Passionate lip play_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Okay, this was getting ridiculous.

Overlord threw a quick glance around the corner - clear! - then hunkered down to call for backup.

The first person to pick up was less than sympathetic. *"Sounds like an ideal mission for you."*

"It is **not** ," Overlord growled as he risked another glance around. "I make a lousy ambassador and you know it."

*"It's an infiltration mission meant to distract the X-oids and plant you in their midst for when the assault begins."* Sixshot paused. *"That the distraction has taken the form of a fascination with your lips is probably a good thing. The more often your mouth is full, the less likely it is that you'll talk."* And with that, he hung up.

Frustrated, Overlord called Blackshadow. Surely he would understand the level of offensive behavior the X-oids displayed. " - after that, no matter how often Soundwave downloads my credentials, that one damn glyph still glitches into the common sign for 'whore' in their language, and they keep making me **offers**."

There was an odd pause on the other end of the connection. *"Are they good offers?"*

"I've gotten worse - no!" Overlord banged his helm against the wall. "That's not the point! I'm a killing machine - "

*"They're supposed to think you're an ambassador."*

"Ambassador! Whatever! My point is that every time I turn around there's a tentacle freak making suggestive gestures at my mouth, and the mission requires both of us to keep a relatively low profile, so favor from the crown prince is an asset we can't compromise. Soundwave can't change the official story, and the prince has **nineteen tentacles** , Blackshadow! I don't know how all of them would fit even if I **wanted** to try!"

*"Do you?"*

"I'm a little curious - shut up!"

Still laughing, Blackshadow hung up.

While debating the merits of calling Megatron to complain about working conditions, Overlord spotted the crown prince of sleazy propositions and large amounts of universally-accepted cash credits rounding the corner. Tentacle tips stiffened in excitement, beginning to emerge from their sheathes. Overlord frowned, then realized his mistake as all five of the creature's glistening eyes fixated on the purse of his mouth.

*"Keep the prince out of the main palace for the next hour,"* Soundwave said via short range radio, and Overlord's mouth fell open slightly in dismay.

That was a mistake. All nineteen of the crown prince's tentacles shot out to full extension, all of them eager to crowd together in teasing touches along Overlord's lips, dipping just barely inside as if tempting him to chase them.

Overlord rather wanted to bite them off, but for the next hour he was going to have to play nice.

He resolved to never tell Blackshadow about how this turned out. Or how much money he made in the bargain.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	66. Pt 66: Tentacles

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 66:_** _"Tentaclessssss…_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Y'know, mechs could be such downers. The complainers were always going on about the downsides of being enslaved to Unicron and his minions. Sure, the Unmaker had eaten Cybertron's moons and most of the Autobots, and yeah, Galvatron was a slagsucker. The Decepticons were scared lubeless of the fragger and his clusterfrag of an army, but life wasn't all bad.

For one thing, scutwork shifts had gone from dull, mindless monotony to constant fear for life and limb, and the troublemakers were lying low as a result. Galvatron did _not_ frag around when someone misbehaved. It cut down on everyday backstabbing when putting a foot out of line resulted in an instant bellow of, "Cyclonus!"

Boom. Immediate exile to the Unmaker's interior to scrub the smelterwork digestive system's floors with a scrub brush made of whatever piece you could salvage from the last species Unicron had eaten. It didn't take long for mechs to prefer keeping their heads down to dying via janitor duty. Unicron didn't seem to discriminate between Decepticons scrubbing his interior and mobile snacks.

And if that didn't seem like an upside to Galvatron taking over Cybertron, then it's clear you've never met Wildrider. The mech was chronically unable to behave, and he _thrived_ on chaos. Getting assigned to punishment duty deep in Unicron's smelterworks just presented him with a wonderful playground. Death-defying stunt driving was already his daily commute. Adding the looming threat of bubbling vats of acid and tentacles grabbing at him from the walls just made it _exciting_.

Laughing crazily, he cornered just ahead of Swindle, who screeched in panic as the lashing tendrils tangled into an impenetrable knot blocking the corridor in front of them. "We're trapped!" the Combaticon shouted, transforming so hard his heel-wheels left skidmarks of rubber on the floor.

"You'll be scrubbing those later!" Wildrider predicted at a loud crow. He didn't even slow down. He hit the tentacles at full speed, counting on his forcefield to take the impact as they had so many times before. "Not today, Unifragger!" he jeered, squipping through the squeeze of tentacles as if greased. They slipped right off him. The tighter they squeezed, the faster he popped out on the other side, like someone squeezing an apple seed between thumb and forefinger. Pip!

Swindle stared, dumbfounded, as the menacing tentacles retreated into the walls. Unicron quite clearly didn't care that the Combaticon had been trapped. The one he wanted to catch was cackling in the distance, shaking his sportscar aft in swerving taunt down the halls. Wildrider not only flirted with death, he outright taunted it to catch him.

Considering how many times Cyclonus took him to and from the Unmaker's smelterworks, you have to wonder if Unicron wasn't intentionally letting Wildrider squirm free. Nobody wanted to know if chasing the Stunticon counted as foreplay or an appetizer.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	67. Pt 67: Consensual Tentacles Inflation

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 67:_** _"consensual tentacles resulting in inflation._ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Earth had all kinds of kinky slag going on. Sandstorm was never going to adjust to how nobody else seemed to care. Obscenities happened right out in the open, and he boggled at the lack of attention they drew.

Take fueling, for example.

Not sipping a cube. Fueling the way Octane did it. Fuel transport in specific, but the bold, brazen way Octane would whip out a hose for anyone who looked a little thirsty embarrassed even a Wrecker like Sandstorm. Who _did_ that?!

The first time he escorted Octane to a fuel pick-up, he thought maybe the Decepticon-gone-kinda-Neutral was playing it up as a prank. Sandstorm spent a lot of time that day pretending to scan the horizon for suspicious activity. Suspicious anything at all if it meant he wouldn't have to watch the humans hook a dozen thick, sturdy hoses up to the massive tanker truck sitting on the runway. The lewd gurgle and gush of liquid energy pouring into huge empty tanks sounded louder than anything he'd ever heard before.

The second time, he turned to ask, "Do you really have to do that in public?"

"Do what?" Octane asked as if being pumped to capacity through every orifice he had was an everyday occurrence. On Earth, it appeared to be just that.

It was worse when Octane transformed. He held a large amount of fuel in vehicle mode, but his third mode was even bigger. Already large tanks expanded, fuel sloshing as the plane settled onto his landing gear. "Alright, we paid for a full load. Fill me up."

The humans repositioned their snaking hoses, big black lines feeding pressurized fuel in and in and in. Sandstorm watched in amazement as Octane sank slowly lower, landing gear groaning and tires bulging as they took the increased weight.

"I can take more," the tanker called cheerfully when Sandstorm would have called the humans off.

The men clustered around the hoses shrugged and opened the stops, pouring a gush of fuel in while the measurement gauges on Octane's instrument panels spun wildly.

"Here, I've got one more reserve tank," Octane said when the humans finally stopped stuffing him. "Sandy, you'll have to force it in."

"What?" It came out weak even as he felt pulled forward. Octane could hold _more_?

"Get a hose."

Sandstorm pinched a hose between his fingers, looking around nervously in case anyone was watching. The humans didn't seem to care, but this was slagging indecent. Octane popped a hatch far forward, close to his nose, and Sandstorm cringed as he followed the tanker's instructions, pushing hard on the hose to screw it in deep to the intake.

"Alright, now you gotta put some pressure on the nozzle to keep it there."

"Won't that burst the hose?"

"Nah, just gotta get in as much as I can hold. I've done it before."

Sandstorm wasn't sure he believed him. Octane was already so heavy he'd have to waddle off the runway. "Okay...um. There." He pushed with two fingers.

"Harder. Air's escaping."

He leaned a bit.

"Come on, Sandy, put your tires into it!"

Sandstorm shoved his whole arm behind the thrust, and Octane grunted. Liquid splashed around Sandstorm's fingers, and the dripping patter felt like nothing they should be doing right out in the open. He wondered how much more Octane could take before people started watching, and if he'd stop once they did.

"That's it, Sandy," Octane said breathlessly, and something gurgled deep inside him. It was a quiet, private sound, the sound of someone finally filled to capacity and liking it.

Sandstorm pushed harder.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	68. Pt 68: Pregnancy

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 68:_** _Pregnancy_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

At some point in the creation of the universe, it had to be said.

"You've put on a lot of weight."

Primus directed a look across the cosmos. It burned with the fire of the thousand suns spawned in the space of his glaring. Novas came and went in his optics.

Unicron was unimpressed. "I'm just sayin'."

Primus turned a cold shoulder, rubbing his hands over the rounded section of his body which would soon be the birthplace of a species. He hadn't decided yet on a corporeal form, but he was thinking...maybe a planet. He liked the roundness. Round things appealed to him.

Not like Unicron. Unicron liked spikey things, but Unicron could go sit on one of his sharp objects. Primus cast a glower at his opposite. Whatever he made would forever be unmade by Unicron, but the little lives growing inside him would return, renew, and live again.

His optics went distant as the galaxies of stars Unicron stirred into a black hole. Round like a planet, but the symmetry of a cube, with the structure of an empty frame...yes. An Allspark to kindle, and a Matrix as a gateway, creating a cycle. Cycles had an appealing completeness to them. They were hard to break, too.

Primus hunched over his planet-belly, crooning a lullaby to the sleeping creations deep inside him. Off in his own disaster, Unicron was twisting some other god's work into a tentacled nightmare creature, half metal and half flesh, but Primus tried to ignore him. Unicron would do his best to crush Primus' children, but they would be many and blessed.

Primus smiled down at Cybertron.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	69. Pt 69: Fat Robots

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 69:_** _"_ Fat Robots _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It was the mass. Motormaster had it bad for the sheer bulk of him.

A programmed imperative put him opposite Optimus Prime, made him King of the Road, but the same programming meant he had a code-deep rivalry against anyone with wheels. It made a complete hash of his personal relationships. His combiner team got on like a five-car pile-up on the freeway, and he wasn't even _attracted_ to the fragheads.

Of course he had a crush the size of a metrotitan on Lord Megatron, but that was a distant, unattainable thing that left him comparing every other potential suitor against that glory. Warriors fell far short. Decepticons weren't Decepticon _enough_.

That left Autobots, but, well, the wheels. King of the Road. Didn't really work out.

But on the complete other end of the spectrum was a slagging orbital platform shaped like some kind of Jell-O mold who flew like a lead brick in atmosphere, fought up above the planet where Motormaster didn't have to compare fighting styles, and weighed more than Astrotrain in rootmode. Motormaster knew this because the Autobot minibot dropped out of the sky on top of him during the last fight.

Kerthump. Motormaster ate asphalt.

Body projectile was certainly one way to take him out of combat. That little glitch was _heavy_. It was like being landed on by Menasor!

...it was kind of hot.

Motormaster stayed prone under the tubby minibot longer than he had to, stunned by the sheer weight standing on his back. Cosmos tromped up and down him, small feet leaving disproportionately-deep dents in his plating, and Motormaster _liked_ it. Cosmos was small but dense, outmassing shuttleformers but sizeshifting to a minibot in rootmode, and Primus take the wheel. Motormaster had never had a literal crush before but Cosmos was compressing him into the road!

Motormaster drove with his optics on the sky after that.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	70. Pt 70: Size Difference

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 70:_** _"_ Size difference _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It was a stupid problem, not just because it was so frustrating but because neither one of them had seen it coming.

Jazz was short even for an Autobot. He wasn't quite a minibot frame, but he didn't clear Prowl's optic level.

Megatron was darn near twice his height.

No matter what position they took, there wasn't a chance in the pit they could kiss without disengaging. Jazz almost dislocated something straining, and Megatron grimaced as he craned his neck trying to meet the Autobot, but size difference just didn't allow their faces anywhere near each other. Hunching and huffing just made the situation faintly ridiculous.

Megatron compromised by stuffing his thumb into the little mech's mouth, but the way the tyrant pressed his lips into a thin line indicated how unsatisfying it was for both of them.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	71. Pt 71: Size Kink

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 71:_** _"_ Size kink _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Scrapper tore into the bunker like his aft was on fire. "Help!"

"Clearly the date didn't go as well as you hoped," Hook without even looking up from the dating app one of his idiot teammates had loaded onto his tablet. He'd kill whichever one of them had made him a profile and started swiping right on all these clearly unworthy mechs vying for his attention. One of these days he'd catch them in the act. In the meantime, however, he had to furiously scroll through and re-rate all the profiles. Swipe _left_ on that one.

Scrapper grabbed the tablet out of his hands, flung it over one shoulder, and grabbed him by the upper arms to shake. "No, you don't understand, I need polish!"

Hook felt disturbingly like a bobblehead. "Wh-wh-wh-what?"

"What kind of polish?" Mixmaster called from the lab. Bonecrusher stealthily kicked Hook's tablet across the common room to Long Haul, who picked it up and began swiping right on hopeful suitors.

Scrapper dropped Hook and whipped around, a wild look in his visor. "I need all the polish!"

Hook held a hand to his head to make sure it was still in place. Oooh, dizzy. "For...what?"

Scrapper's hands curled into desperate claws, frantic to make them understand the urgency of the situation. "That Supreme I went out with? He wants me to go over to his place!"

The other Constructicons looked at him. They exchanged questioning looks. "He's...already seen you, mech," Bonecrusher said carefully.

Hands clawed in Bonecrusher's direction. "No! No, you don't understand! He wants me to **go over to his place**."

The special emphasis got through this time. Omega Supreme wanted Scrapper to come over for more than just a few drinks. Hook's dizzy annoyance dropped into awe. A little envy, too. All he'd gotten from the stupid dating app was some kind of prearranged date with a guy named Sunstreaker. He wasn't even sure he was going to go. He was fairly sure he hadn't even agreed to it, yet there it was on his calendar.

Meanwhile, Scrapper got to frag a _Supreme_?

Life wasn't fair.

"You don't need polish," Mixmaster said slowly. "You need lube."

"I might need to transport in the amount you're going to need," Long Haul agreed.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	72. Pt 72: Vore

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 72:_** _"_ _Vore_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Did he just…"

"…swallow us?"

They looked at each other. Then, because they were little gearheads without the common sense to be afraid, they started exploring. It wasn't every day Devastator shoved people in his mouth, after all. The rest of the Decepticons were probably out there still staring, dumbfounded. Soundwave was probably doing that silent freaking out thing he did where nobody could tell he was absolutely losing his slag.

"What part of ol' Hookster ya think this is?" Rumble asked as he kicked a suspiciously overpowered vocalizer in the back of Devastator's throat. He'd always known Hook was a loudmouth. "His aft?"

Frenzy sniggered. "He talks out it enough. I'm more interested in where he puts all these teeth." Balanced on the rim of the throat intake - it slid open and shut in convulsive gag reflex at his continued refusal to slide through it like a good eaten morsel - he stared out over Devastator's tongueless mouth. Counting the individual dental pieces slotted into the massive combiner's mouth took a while. "Mech, this's getting' weird. There's, like, seventy of these things."

"Are not!" Rumble stopped poking at the vocalizer and scrambled back up the vertical tunnel that was Devastator's throat, popping up through the intake and sending the gestalt into a coughing fit. Both Cassettes rode the violent motions easily, barely even noticing how badly Devastator wanted them out now that they were in.

Frenzy spoke louder to be heard over the hacking noises. "Naw, maybe not seventy, but lots."

"Yeah, that's kinda freaky."

They contemplated the many teeth and possible teeth locations within Hook when the surgeon wasn't combined into Devastator.

Devastator continued to make awful horking noises. When he grew uncomfortable enough to stick a finger in his own mouth to fish around, Frenzy and Rumble spelunked down his throat looking for more places to irritate. Soundwave began to fret noticeably. The Cassettes were starting to enjoy themselves.

The Constructicons felt violated for days. Hook became increasingly weirded out by the considering looks thrown his way.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	73. Pt 73: Micro-Macro Vore

**[* * * * *]**

 ** _Pt. 73:_** _"Micro/Macro Vore_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

At least it didn't happen in Starscream's quarters.

Megatron sat up, disgruntled, and tried to focus on the positive aspects of yet another accidental size displacement. Shockwave had assured him the glitches had been ironed out of this new altmode, but obviously not. He'd been shrinking at odd times for the last three months. Last time, Starscream had attempted to step on him.

Hence why it was a good thing Megatron had been breaking into Tarn's quarters tonight. Which...actually sounded creepier than it should, now that he thought about it.

"This is the last time I reward one of my followers with a surprise frag," he muttered to himself. Interfacing made for a good reward, but he was fairly certain priming his interface equipment had caused the size malfunction. Besides, Tarn already worshiped at his feet. Showing up out of nowhere was a reward in and of itself for such a loyal follower. Interfacing was a pleasant but unnecessary addition to his nightly regime of terrifying and/or impressing the more aggressively ambitious of his Decepticons.

Waking his followers out of a sound recharge reinforced his own propaganda. The mental image of a leader who was everywhere and could do anything came in handy. Hmm. A policy of no more reward-frags should handily deflate Overlord's overinflated expectations the next time Megatron turned up in his quarters. The slagger was starting to feel entitled to Megatron's attention instead of threatened by his power.

Still musing on the change in his policies, Megatron climbed to his feet and looked around.

And up.

If he believed in Primus, he'd have cussed the god out. "How in the..." How was this even physically _possible?!_

The furniture _loomed_ , towering so far above him it would take more than a dozen bodylengths at his current height to reach the seat of the chair. The bed stood even higher than that, and Megatron craned his neck attempting to see the top. He'd shrunk right before kneeling on the bed, intending to straddle Tarn in order to subdue and seduce the mech in one, but instead he'd ended up on the floor. Tarn slumbered on.

Megatron assumed so, anyway, considering the buzzing roar coming from overhead. What was wrong with Tarn's vents? He sounded like a mining bore at full throttle. Had he always snored this loud, or did Megatron's shrunken audios pick up higher frequencies?

Shaking the thought away, the tiny Decepticon leader turned to look toward where he remembered the door being. It was an alarming distance away. In the dark, his pinprick optics couldn't even see that far. The walls of the room simply faded away into the hazy dim black of the distance. When he squinted, he thought he saw a steady glow that might be the door panel. From down here, it looked like one of the moons in the sky.

It was not a good feeling to be indoors and realize he was so small the ceiling was as unreachable as the sky.

Worse, there was no way in the Pit he could use that door panel. Megatron shifted from foot to foot, testing his weight, then forcibly stilled himself. No, he couldn't. Even if he could somehow climb up that high, he simply didn't have the body mass to push the keypad buttons. The override code he had for every door in the base wouldn't work, either. At this size, he'd have to be _inside_ the door panel to get his teeny radio system in broadcast range to transmit the code.

Meaning that he couldn't get out of here by himself. Meaning that he had to wake Tarn.

Yes, it was a very good thing this hadn't happened in Starscream's quarters.

Megatron turned back around, tipping back on his heels to frown upward. The bed looked as easy to climb as a cliff in the Manganese Mountains. He'd been built a miner and modified to be a gladiator, not a climber.

"This is going to take all night," he said to nobody in particular as he started for the nearest metal seam. There was no clear way up onto the bed, but hopefully he could find some handholds where it'd been screwed together.

If he'd been any larger, it wouldn't have worked. His hands barely fit into the seam, and the screwholes were shallow ledges his fingertips could hardly grasp. Climbing was a slow, tense hand-over-hand that left his hands and wrists aching as he dangled from handholds he couldn't trust not to slip at any moment. During a rest break, arms and hands almost trembling from exertion, he made the mistake of looking down.

Megatron the gladiator, the Slagmaker, Lord of the Decepticons and Tyrant of Cybertron, felt his tanks heave. Heat flushed through his lines in a dizzy wave as he stared downward into the abyss. He'd never been afraid of heights in his life, but he'd never hung by his hands over utter blackness before, aware that a lost hold would plummet his tiny, fragile body down and down and down until the hard, sudden stop as he finally encountered the floor.

Shockwave couldn't repair what was crushed beyond repair. Gravity was as merciless opponent as any Autobot.

Abruptly aware that his life was on the line, Megatron hurried upward while icy prickles ran across his spark.

He collapsed once he reached the top. "Grappling hook. Crane line. Something," he said to himself a little deliriously as he gasped for cooler air, vents as wide as they'd go. "No more handgun alts." A flight-capable altmode sounded like a marvelous idea. No size shifting for that.

Plans for the future would have to wait. Right now, he needed to wake Tarn up.

Something that would have been easier if he hadn't climbed the _foot_ of the bed. Megatron stared up the endless length of the bed and felt every bit a microsized mech who'd spent two hours hauling himself up a sheer cliff by his hands.

"Damn." Taking a deep in-vent, he dialed his voxbox up and bellowed, " **Tarn!** "

To his audios, he had a deep, commanding voice. At the moment, however, his audios were so miniscule Hook would have trouble finding them, much less tuning them. His yell petered into nothing. Megatron had no doubt that the static-buzz of snoring coming from the head of the bed had more bass to it than his voice, and it was certainly louder.

Grumbling, he started up the bed.

An hour in, the dark mound silhouetted against the even darker room turned out to be a thigh. Megatron had managed to walk up between Tarn's legs, somehow forgetting the fact that Tarn was recharging sprawled out. A charming habit when he'd been planning to ravish his loyal follower, but spread legs were now an inconvenience. Tarn's thighs were sleek walls to a microsized mech.

"This is not how I planned to arrive here," Megatron said dryly as he followed Tarn's thigh to the mech's much more climbable crotch. Tarn's entire pelvic span was a highly decorated area full of biolights, multi-directional joints, and as many handholds as a mech of any size could ask for.

Under any other circumstances, Megatron would quite enjoy being down here. As it was, he had nothing more in mind than assessing the vast dome between Tarn's legs for the best route up. His arms complained wearily as he started up the side, digging his fingers into the edge of the plating where codpiece met hip joint.

"Nothing about tonight has gone as planned; I'll not hold it against you," Megatron said idly, more to keep his mind off his tired arms than for Tarn's sake. "Your aid in this situation will earn whatever reward you desire. From the hints you slip into our conversations, I might find myself revisiting your bed shortly."

Tarn's buzzing snore transmitted through his armor strong enough to rattle Megatron's teeth. He clenched his jaw, speaking out of stubborn refusal to let it overpower him. "Of course, I'd be far more grateful if you woke up **now** instead of requiring this ridiculous trek. I never suspected you to be the type to sleep so deeply." Although blaming a mech for not noticing someone smaller than the first joint of their smallest finger crawling around on them wasn't fair.

Megatron wasn't feeling fair right now. He was exhausted and angry, and it took him far longer than he wished to climb to the top of Tarn's crotch. He felt relieved, then oddly proud of his accomplishment. Humiliation hit him a second later at the ridiculousness of his supposed accomplishment. Mortified, he glanced toward the door as if Starscream would appear out of nowhere to mock him.

Fortunately, the Seeker didn't appear.

" **Arise!** " Megatron roared once he recovered, standing straight and bellowing in the direction of Tarn's head.

Tarn mumbled something and shifted, a huge arm flopping across his waist. The loud thunder of metal crashing on metal created a great wave of displaced air. That would have been enough to rock Megatron where he stood _except he wasn't standing there any longer._

A slight shift from Tarn was a major earthquake for a tiny mech balanced on the precipice of Mt. Codpiece, and Megatron would die at Optimus Prime's hands before admitting to the panicked shriek that escaped him as he slid down the slope. "Tarn! **Tarn!** " He wouldn't say another _word_ about Starscream's cowardice. "Wake up, you fool! Wake up! I will not die this way, do your hear me?! This is not how Megatron dies!"

Tarn shifted again, and Megatron's throat closed around his voxbox as hip joints the size of buildings ground in their sockets. His fingers scrambled for a handhold, for a scratch to dig into, _anything_. If he dropped into the joints, Tarn would grind him into a paste just by moving!

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Megatron's fingers skidded across Tarn's plating, but he saw the opportunity as he passed it. "I will apologize for this later," he promised in a strained cry, and his cannon arm jerked up, firing with pinpoint accuracy into the seam where heavy metal armor protected vulnerable interface equipment.

It didn't matter that he was an insignificant speck of a mech wielding an even teenier weapon. A fusion reactor powered Megatron's cannon. A tiny fusion reactor, but a fusion reactor nonetheless.

Given their size difference, Megatron imagined Tarn felt the equivalent of a red hot needle directly to the...well. It woke him up at last, and that was what Megatron had been aiming for. Sort of. Not literally, but he had no intention of ever mentioning what he'd actually aimed for.

If he survived Tarn waking up, that was. Terror gave Megatron the energy to regain his feet and bolt for the nearest secure handhold as Tarn jerked upright. "Tarn!"

A huge hand slammed down at his heels, an involuntary reaction as Tarn curled around the injury. Chill horror turned the hot panic to ice down Megatron's back. Lurching movements swung the tiny mech violently about, and Megatron hung on with desperate strength. "Tarn! Tarn, listen! **Tarn!** " The gigantic hands missed him by narrow margins as they patted and pressed as if that would stop the pain. Megatron kicked, curling his legs up to his chest then letting them drop to swing his whole body to the side. Tarn wasn't even trying to hit him. The shot had probably felt like a sting, however, and a mech's first instinct on being stung was to swat the stinger.

" **TARN!** " Dangling by one arm, Megatron frantically braced as best he could to take aim with his cannon.

Curses rocked the room, or so it felt to Megatron as Tarn's hands yanked away, shaking away yet another sting, this one a direct hit to the base of the thumb.

Megatron hung on with grim determination. "Tarn! Tarn, can you hear me?! Tarn!"

Fortunately for him, while a mech's first instinct was to slap stinging parasites, a mech twice stung usually looked for the source. The better to smash it, of course, but in this case Tarn took a look down at his own crotch and said a phrase Megatron, gladiator and miner, had never heard before but immediately committed to memory for future use.

"My lord? I-I - "

Befuddlement wasn't a good look on Tarn. Megatron could work with it. "Size displacement malfunction," he said and had to repeat himself when Tarn couldn't hear his squeaking voice. "Take me to Shockwave and tell no one of this."

"At once, Lord Megatron!" Tarn started to reach down and hesitated, hands hovering above his microleader. "Ah. How shall I..?" He awkwardly offered the side of his hand as if to scoop Megatron up, but Megatron took a running step and launched himself upward, climbing Tarn's hand to settle in the palm. "Oh. You have, ah, some experience with this...malfunction?"

Megatron refused to dignify that with an answer. "It is none of your concern. To Shockwave!"

Tarn flinched at his leader's disapproval. Bringing his hand to his chest for safekeeping of its precious cargo, he stood and headed for the door. "As you command."

The words rumbled through Megatron in much the same way Tarn's snoring had, albeit in a far more pleasant way. Tarn's entire body had been tuned into a weapon, metal brought into fine alignment with his outlier talent, and Megatron found it necessary to sit down suddenly. For balance as Tarn walked, obviously, but...

He'd known Tarn's spark held a peculiar resonance, the loadbearer strength that could support more than a normal mech's could. He hadn't known it made Tarn thrum to its pulse in a subsonic beat behind his voice. It felt like a song just out of hearing. As small as Megatron was, the music vibrated his whole body. It wasn't an actual rhythm, it didn't crackle like the plasma of an actual spark, but when Tarn had spoken, Megatron _tasted_ him on his tongue.

Blinking, he leaned back against Tarn's chest. "Your loyalty does you credit," he said.

"You flatter me, my lord," Tarn said, and pinprick optics flickered, a tiny back arching an even tinier amount as Megatron inhaled deeply, surrounded and immersed by that _voice_.

If Tarn thought it odd Megatron engaged him conversation right after shutting his own attempt down, he didn't bring it up. He was, in all things, an obedient, loyal Decepticon.

Megatron made sure to reward him well for his discretion.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It wasn't Shockwave's fault this time. It was Starscream's.

The knowledge didn't comfort, but at least Megatron knew who to beat the bolts out if he survived this fiasco. His systems lurched through another size shift, internal parts clicking smaller, and everything around him looked abruptly bigger. Scowling, Megatron steadied himself against the wall but kept running. Speed was more important than dignity right now. The longer he remained in the halls, the easier Starscream could find him. He sprinted across intersections echoing with excited shouts from distant hunting parties, and once, the swelling roar of a jet rocketing down the hall toward him.

Only one jet had the skill to fly indoors. Megatron took to creeping through the halls after that, sticking to dark shadows and peering around corners warily.

With Soundwave out on a mission, radioing for help would bring Starscream. That would be the opposite of help. That would be his death, eager and smiling.

Unfortunately, that left him few allies. Decepticons were known for their ambition, not their loyalty. Few of the mechs in Darkmount could be trusted at any time, but the ambush that had activated his size shifting was a sign Starscream had subverted the garrison. No one but a fool would take a stand against Megatron, but mobs were easily led by fools. And once a group defied him, more would follow. At this point, Megatron had to put his shrinking self in the hands of someone he trusted _despite_ mutiny.

Fortunately, one Decepticon in Darkmount would take the news of mutiny as a personal insult instead of an invitation. As a bonus, Tarn had already proven capable of handling Megatron at his smallest, _and_ his quarters were on this side of the base, as far from Starscream's minions as Megatron could run in short order. Shortening order, that was. Size shifting while running resulted in losing his balance more often than not, veering into walls like an overcharged drunk as his legs shortened between one step and the next.

He made it regardless. Megatron frowned up at the keypad to Tarn's quarters. This would be difficult. He already knew Tarn was a heavy sleeper, and he couldn't risk radio contact or pounding on the door. He'd have to break into the room before breaking his silence.

Good thing he'd already consigned his dignity to the smelter. Megatron took a moment to pinch the bridge of his nose, resigning himself to his fate.

Then he began jumping up and down.

The keypad was higher than he stood, okay? And he didn't have _time_ to find a box to stand on. He'd started out his normal size an hour ago, and he'd shrunk to knee-height by now. It didn't seem that he'd stop shrinking any time soon. By the time he found a box, he might be too small to haul it into place.

Which left jumping in place to punch the override code into the keypad, one digit at a time.

He stumbled as he landed on unexpectedly shorter legs, gritted his teeth, and jumped harder. "I will feed him his own wings," he grunted between jumps. "I'll crumple his thrusters into scrap metal. I'll chain him to the ground for centuries!" His audios heard his usual harsh rasp, but he knew better. Exertion triggered the size shifting. He was losing height with each jump, and everything in him was shrinking, including his voice. Starscream would _love_ to hear Mighty Megatron squeak.

The last jump required a running start. Megatron desperately aimed for an Enter key he could no longer see, sprinting forward to take a climbing jump step up off the wall, arm straining upward. His fist slammed down on multiple keys. He cursed as he fell, going down hard as his body halved itself in one fell swoop. Dazed, blinking away static, he pushed back up onto his feet.

The door swished open.

"Yes!" Staggering through another size shift, he ran forward into Tarn's quarters. Safe!

In a manner of speaking. Optics wide, Megatron took in the vast, yawning space of the huge world around him. "…not again." Yes, again. Even as he spoke, his systems clicked, and he flinched through another size shift. Matter displacement didn't hurt, but removing and rearranging his atoms would never be comfortable.

Recovering, he dialed his voxbox all the way up to yell, "Tarn! Your Lord commands your presence!"

Assistance, rather, but right now he'd settle for Tarn just waking up. As small as he was now, however, he couldn't make a dent in Tarn's recharge. It was faint, but Megatron felt the rise and fall of Tarn's engine rumble through the floor. The buzzing static-snore drowned out his voice, he was sure.

There wasn't any way out of it. Megatron started running again. He ran for a long while, taking advantage of the flat floor to go as fast as possible. His systems seemed to have settled down after the last jerking size shift, but it left him almost the same size as last time. He knew he could make the climb at this size, but it wasn't going to be easy. He didn't remember the last experience fondly.

At least this time he could aim for the right end of the bed. Waking Tarn would be considerably easier if he could find the mech's audio the first try.

A plan that sounded simple but failed to take into account the massive blockades in the way. "Of course," Megatron panted once he finally reached the top of the bed. He stared at the gigantic tank treads surrounding Tarn's helm. "Why would anything about this be easy?"

Going around would take longer than going over. Besides, the tank treads had a rubbery texture that made them easier to climb than the bed. Megatron was making good progress upward when he ran into one small snag: the ruts. An hour in, and Megatron was thoroughly lost in the tread pattern. He felt like a turborat in a maze.

"It should not be this hard to go up. Gravity is down. The opposite should bring me to the top of your shoulder." He eyed the featureless black walls around him. His GPS didn't work on a microscale. "This is ridiculous. Tarn!" Dialing his vox box up all the way, he inhaled deeply and put the exhale into broadcasting his voice as loud as physically possible over the buzzing roar of Tarn's snoring. " **Tarn!** "

The treads _shifted._

Annoyed, Megatron sat down hard instead of dancing about to keep his balance. Fragging heavy sleeper. " **Tarn!** "

This time, the distinctive whine of a T-cog initializing rattled him down to his gears, and he froze in horror as everything moved.

 _Eeeerrrnnclick click click. Click._

For a second, the world stood still. Megatron held onto tread rubber, suddenly far too aware of the fact that if Tarn transformed, all the tankformer's considerable weight would come down on him. Tiny, fragile him, lost in tread ruts, vent slats shut tight as he furiously thought of an escape plan, _any_ plan that would get him out of Tarn's damn treads before he was crushed like an insignificant dust mote.

 _Click. Click._

 _Click._

The movement underfoot subsided. Treads settled, and a low groan swept through the miniature mech in a wave of prickling circuitry and electrified wires. Megatron blinked rapidly. After a long pause, static buzzed. Tarn had slid back into deep recharge without waking enough to transform.

Megatron took a moment to lean back against the tread-wall, survival-jitters shaking him. The rush of energy without an outlet trembled in his hands and knee joints. He had…forgotten how vulnerable being tiny made him. Voluntarily not-remembered, rather, pushing terror to the back of his memories where he didn't have to think about the frightening loss of control as someone else, someone _huge,_ determined if he lived or died without even knowing he existed. Tarn's very ignorance terrified Megatron, although he refused to acknowledge the fear. Tarn would do anything to save him, he knew that. Loyalty had its uses. But loyalty couldn't do a slagging thing for Megatron right this second.

He sagged more than he leaned as the panic passed. He wasn't one to let weakness stop him, however, so he forced himself to his feet and onward, this time with his mouth clamped shut. No more shouting. He could be patient. Impatience was a terrible cause of death.

It took too long wandering about, but eventually Megatron found his way past the first set of treads. From there, he went down and up into the next set, this time confident he had the pattern down. Now that he knew where to turn, the ruts made for time-consuming but easy-to-follow roads directly to Tarn's audio. The third set of treads put him within shouting distance.

Assuming he dared shouting again. He crossed his arms, tapping his fingers as he thought. Tarn slumbered on, optics dark. Would he transform if awakened? Could Megatron take the chance? Maybe it would be better to simply climb up under the safety of Tarn's mask. That, at least, didn't become a weight-bearing part of the mech's anatomy in altmode.

Megatron checked the time and frowned. No doubt by now Starscream had declared him dead and set up some sort of overdone ceremony declaring himself leader of the Decepticons. How tediously predictable. Darkmount would be in chaos for days if Megatron didn't break up this nonsense before Starscream got too full of himself.

"Onward," he muttered, sliding down the last of Tarn's thoroughly unnecessary layers of treads. Megatron had developed an intense dislike of tank treads during the last four hours. How much shoulder kibble did a mech need?

Of course, he wasn't too fond of gigantic ornamental helm structures, either. When one was the size of a bolt, it was difficult to tell where the edge of Tarn's mask ended and his audio began. Megatron decided to start kicking things and following the echoes, which worked well enough until Tarn actually began to wake.

"Hrrrn."

Another thrilling chill swept through Megatron's circuitry. He shivered. Oh, that voice. It wasn't for nothing that Tarn had recently become one of his favored conversational partners. "Tarn," he experimented into the depths of a helm cranny. "Tarn. Wake."

"Hmmn. Lord Megatron," Tarn purred, sleep-rough and unintentionally erotic. Proximity and size difference gave his voice a deep rumble Megatron had never heard before. "You're here…with me…"

"Correct. I - " Tarn turned his head, and Megatron fell down with a grunt. "Careful!"

"Always, my Lord, always…" Metal rasped, loud and sudden. "Please, Lord, command…me…"

At least one of his soldiers followed orders. Climbing back to his feet, Megatron opened his mouth to tell Tarn to take him to Shockwave -

He shut it. After a few seconds, he swallowed what he'd been about to say. The rasp of metal-on-metal had fallen into a rhythm, familiar as it was primal, and it seemed Tarn wasn't truly awake yet. His most loyal follower apparently thought this a dream.

He reevaluated his opinion of Tarn's voice. That was intentionally erotic, no doubt about it. Seductive did sometimes sound sleepy.

Rude and embarrassing as it might be, the Decepticon Cause came before personal pleasure. "Tarn! I need you to wake up and take me - " A massive hand came out of nowhere, brushing at him like it would chase away the tiny buzzing irritant. Megatron dodged, squawking indignant protest as he sprawled just under a finger five times his height. "Tarn! **Wake up before I have you declared a traitor!** "

He could, Megatron reflected somewhat ruefully half a second later, chosen a less jarring threat. Gravity caught up with him right then, blotting everything but _falling falling falling_ from his mind as he tumbled along the edge of Tarn's mask, tossed by the immediate, violent jerk as Tarn shot awake, shaking the cold fear of treason away as thought it were a bad dream. Harsh, panting breaths temporarily drowned out anything else in the room.

A pity, as otherwise Tarn would have heard, "Stop moving!" howled in a high-pitched squeak. Teensy fingers clawed for a handhold. Megatron scrambled. Infinitesimal curls of purple paint peeled away, barely visible scratches, and with an enraged shout that sounded like a bitty peep, he slid behind Tarn's mask. Flailing feet and hands scraped across a scarred cheek, and Tarn automatically cocked his head at the odd sensation.

Bringing Megatron to a halt, feet planted firmly on Tarn's upper lip and fingers wedged into his scar.

Accidentally safe.

It was lucky for both of them that Tarn was so shocked at the sensation of a miniscule mech standing braced under his mask. Megatron was lucky because shock translated into Tarn sitting stock-still. Tarn was lucky because shock kept him from feeling just how hard Megatron quivered at the close call. The Decepticon leader would have killed him for witnessing that moment of sheer, trembling terror.

"I…"

"Tarn…"

"My Lord?!"

"Shut up!" Megatron barked on reflex, fingers digging in. His knees shook alarmingly. He stiffened them to a semblance of straight. "Starscream is up to his tricks again. He believes he's won by reducing me to this size again, and he won't be expecting my return. Bring me to Shockwave without alerting that flying idiot. I want to humble him in front of whatever pathetic following he's scraped together."

Tarn hesitated before answering. Megatron nearly saw red until he realized Tarn didn't want to disobey his previous order to stay silent.

"Speak with care, Tarn," he warned. "My balance is precarious."

"I - yes, Lord Megatron. May I, er, extract you?" Tarn said, moving his lips as little as possible. Heated air still rose up around Megatron, and he had to ride the slight movements.

Megatron looked around himself, taking in his position. "How?"

"I don't believe I can remove my mask without…forgive me, Lord, but if you would, ah. Step down?"

Megatron scowled, wondering what fool Tarn believed him to be to step onto thin air, except the area under his feet wasn't empty anymore. A large tongue peeped between Tarn's lips. It curved up slightly at the tip to tap just below him.

He stared long enough to earn an uncomfortable rev from Tarn's engine. Still staring, Megatron slowly eased one foot down, then the other, using his hands to stay upright as Tarn guided him downward. It took a moment for him to catch on to what the awkward pause meant. With a grimace, he knelt down onto the broad surface, and Tarn gently took him into his mouth, holding him cradled in the supple cup of his tongue. Small as Megatron was, he fit easily in the much bigger mech's mouth. He hunched his shoulders uneasily despite that, and hot breath washed over him. He _felt_ the involuntary gag as Tarn fought the urge to swallow. He would be a mere morsel!

 _Click. Sssssscrape._

Mask removed, Tarn opened his mouth wide. Megatron rose from his tongue and stepped out onto the palm of his hand.

"To Shockwave," he said, and if Tarn licked his lips after putting his mask back on, Megatron pretended he didn't see.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"I'm just giving him what he wants," crooned from outside the clear cube Megatron stood in. "His obsession with the Cause borders on consumption, don't you agree? It consumes **him** ; he wants to consume **it**. Internalizing mere words is a faint shadow of the real thing. Dear Tarn wants his precious Decepticon Lord **inside** him, and this is the most accurate realization of his fantasies. Perhaps if he digests you along with your poetic words, he might take some form of doctrinal nutrition from you. Loyalty as a drug in pill form."

On the table just beyond the clear walls, Tarn struggled against his own bonds. The cuffs and body-bolts holding him flat to the table creaked but held. Megatron's prison was meant to keep him contained. Tarn's held him immobile.

Even that notorious vox box was locked down. Megatron had a spectator seat to the technicians working on Tarn's throat, reaching into his pried-open mouth to deactivate the spark-born talent Tarn was known for. They had plenty of room to work in. The metal structure gagging Tarn held his mouth open, bent bars wedged in top and bottom under the mask someone had carelessly pushed up out of the way without taking entirely off.

This ordeal wasn't about unmasking Tarn, it seemed. He was a means to an end. An enraged, inarticulate roar of overworked vents accompanied another bout of struggling. It did no more good than the last ten attempts had, and Tarn slumped, panting.

"I will not remain powerless for long," Megatron said, projecting his voice in low threat. It didn't work, of course. As small as he was, everything came out a squeak. The mech holding him didn't take his words any more seriously than any of the previous threats, but words were the only weapon Megatron had left. "There will be nowhere in the universe you can hide where I won't find you, and your death will not be swift once I do."

"I'm quivering in fear. Are we ready?" The technicians stepped back, and the top of the cube opened as one of them handed Megatron's captor a pair of tweezers. "Ah, yes, thank you. Now, now, don't **wriggle**."

Megatron snarled at the patronizing tone without stopping his efforts to evade the tips of the tweezers. They pinched at him. He dodged left. Another deft pinch, and he spat a vivid curse as they nipped his shoulder. "Are you attempting," _dodge!_ "to crush me to death? I assumed," duck, duck, and _dive_ under the tips to run to the other corner, "you wanted me unharmed **I will burn your spark to cinders!** "

"Inventive little thing, isn't he?" the mech asked the technician conversationally. With a delicate touch Megatron hadn't anticipated, he lifted the tiny tyrant out of the cube using only a hard pinch to keep his grip. "Ohhh Ta~arn. Say 'ah!'"

Optics hidden under the displaced mask flickered, panicked light reflecting from Tarn's revealed face. Vents _screamed_. Even mute, Tarn denied this. Every piece of him stiffened in refusal. The next second, he went straight to full-on straining against the bolts screwing him flat to the table.

Megatron kicked and clawed air furiously, but it did him no good. "Ahhh!" the mech holding him said cheerily, and Megatron went still as he looked down.

Teeth and tongue and scarred lips stretched wide by shining silver bars, Tarn's mouth gaped open below him. Nothing but air held him from the dark pit waiting at the back of the throat yawning wide under his feet. Harsh blasts of hot air hit him in rapid, panting breaths. Tarn's tongue flattened as if trying to disappear, then curled in some sort of attempt to make a landing pad.

The tweezers opened, and Megatron dropped.

"Frag!"

Arms flailing, he tumbled out of control mid-air and plopped into the mouth below on his back, sliding head-first down the broad curve of Tarn's tongue.

Which slammed him against the roof of the mouth in all urgency. "Do **not** fail me," Megatron hissed, almost wheezing from the firm pressure holding him in place. Tarn seemed to hear him, but the best his loyalist could do was push harder, attempting to scrape him against gravity and slick oral fluid threatening to slide him downward. Megatron couldn't move his arms out of the awkward crossed position they were caught in. He couldn't get a grip on anything this way.

Air rushed past in a muted grunt as Tarn shoved at him. "Harder," Megatron whispered. He turned his head despite the tongue pressing it into the roof of the mouth, but all he could see from head-down like this was Tarn's closed throat intake and the growing pool of oral fluid trickling onto it. Every few seconds, the intake seized as though attempting to open.

"If you swallow me, I will rip you limb from limb and use your limbless **corpse** as target practice," he said in a perfectly level voice. The throat intake before his optics fluttered.

"Gitchy gitchy goo!" sang happily from outside Tarn's mouth, and Megatron tensed somehow further as Tarn jerked. Everything sounded oddly muffled in here, but he could hear the rasping screel of fingers tickling far too close for comfort. The fragger was stroking Tarn's _throat_ , coaxing and teasing.

Tarn resisted, he did, but the fingers forced him to swallow. He jolted, writhed, and screamed without sound as his throat worked in an entirely involuntary gulp, tongue flicking Megatron to the back of his mouth purely on reflex.

Megatron shouted wordless anger as he slipped through the pooled oral fluid like he'd been greased. His heel _clang_ ed off a tooth but didn't stop him. It merely twisted him over onto his front so he could _see_ the walls close in around him as he fell headlong down Tarn's throat.

The first sensation was terror. The second, rage.

The third sensation Megatron felt was a warm, wet, snug _squeeze_ , firm and confining as if he'd been wrapped up in full-body compression. The feeling wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't painful. Coughing, choking puffs of air kept smacking him in the face as Tarn's stressed systems fought over gagging or swallowing. Each convulsive cough was accompanied by a rough squeeze starting around Megatron's head and migrating upward, the individual intakes he was stuck in attempting to reverse their usual direction. However, Megatron could also feel a stronger compression working at odds with the coughing, squeezing from his feet down every other cough. It squeezed him _down_. It surrounded him in unyielding, immobilizing pressure, keeping his arms at his sides as Tarn's throat worked at this angular object lodged in it.

Megatron could feel how each swallow worked him a little further down before Tarn could stop. Tarn's engine whined in distress so loud he could hear it even from here, but he was too far down to force out. Tarn's own body was making the decision for him: choke or swallow.

The choice was inevitable. Megatron gritted his teeth, bracing himself against nothing. Heat radiated from below.

The walls closed in, squeezing him inward, sliding him _down._

Tarn swallowed.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

 ****Thank you to anonymous requester for this storyline!**


	74. Pt 74: Emeto

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 74:**_ _"_ emeto _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

He would never tell anyone, and for very good reason. This was his secret, shameful pleasure, and nobody else would understand. The rest of the Autobots sacrificed on his behalf, skimping their own rations to give him a larger portion. His forcefield took so much fuel to run in the that the idea of rejecting it should have been repulsive.

Maybe that's why it felt so good.

Trailbreaker felt ripple run across his tanks, backwash as the ripple hit the sides and turned the wave in on itself. He swallowed hard and shut off his visor. Confused electrical impulses caused his intakes to flutter, and the burp of air as it climbed his throat tasted hot and sour. It made the chemical receptors in his mouth register fuel impurities that didn't exist, shunting another purge warning to his HUD. It joined a building swarm.

He swallowed and swallowed again, overriding the purge order. It pinged him repeatedly.

His tanks heaved, the processor plant they fed into rerouting. The intakes at the base of each tank clicked shut, locking, and another hose unlocked, the spigot ready to open. It connected to his emergency purge supply, a gas meant to expand the second it released and force out anything in his tanks via the sudden pressure. It would be a violent surge, a hot release as the shuddering hitches now rocking him finally culminated in a long, thorough purge.

It would cleanse him, and it would feel so, so good when the last of his guilt poured out.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	75. Pt 75: Watersports-omorashi

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 75:**_ _"watersports/omorashi with robots in a light hearted way._ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The ones without a vehicle mode were at a disadvantage, to Starscream's mind. Fluid changes were part of a standard maintenance check. It was a choice of top up when a mech was low, or suffer Hook's perfectionist streak and settle into altmode for draining, flush, and a new tank full of whatever it was he insisted they needed that day. Either way, it wasn't difficult or painful. Vehicle modes generally came with the easy in, easy out idea attached. Starscream's own F-15 altmode had instructions written in English on the caps. A _human_ could fill his fuel tank. In fact, he'd seen them countless times in airports pumping fluids in and out of their airplanes.

It was the mechs without vehicle altmodes who had to get it done in rootmode, and that created a curiously vulnerable situation. Not in altmode; Starscream wouldn't even think twice about walking into the repairbay while one of the Stunticons was up on the vehicle lift with oil dribbling out of their undercarriage into a pan. But that was just it: in _altmode_. It was something that most people reflexively insisted had to be done in one mode, and one mode only.

Which put those without vehicle altmodes in an awkward situation. Fluid draining had a strange taboo attached to it.

Also an embarrassing one, as a mech in altmode was part of the background and could therefore be ignored while draining. A mech transformed was a person and had to be acknowledged. The Constructicons had a habit of talking to the people in the repairbay with them, and Hook took a nasty kind of pleasure in pointedly asking questions of anyone who wanted to fade into the background. Someone stuck in rootmode draining fluids didn't want to be part of the conversation. It took effort to open everything up to drain, and trying to talk while doing it resulted in visible, audible sputters as the flow interrupted.

Leaving the pickings pretty slim for where to turn to for a peaceful fluid change. The Reflector components could handle their own business. Soundwave did his own Cassettes. Starscream assumed they helped him in turn, since a mech doing it himself was a fairly annoying, labor-intensive, pain-in-the-aft process.

Megatron came to Starscream.

He glanced at the tyrant standing at the end of his lab counter. The peculiar look of concentration on Megatron's face indicated his tanks were still emptying, and Starscream took the opportunity to study him.

He hated the old fool. Hated him just as much as Megatron hated him right back, yet still Megatron came to him for things like this. That was what the Autobots couldn't understand, the idiots. Even other Decepticons didn't get it, but for all that Starscream would murder Megatron for leadership of the faction, there was a trust there that had its own honor code. It meant Starscream would repair his leader. It meant he ignored the mech in his lab when Megatron came to him for this, as he always did, and silence filled the room, broken only by the soft patter of fluid falling into a drip-pan.

The lack of vehicle altmode was a disadvantage. Starscream mentally shrugged it off. Megatron managed well enough.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	76. Pt 76: Lactation

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 76:**_ _"Lactation_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"I saw one of my wives do this," he said, and Astrotrain wanted to put his head in his hands but he refused to show Octane that sort of weakness. No, not even if Octane wanted him to...nurse.

"She had a baby," the other triple-changer explained with every evidence of enthusiasm as he set up the nozzles on his chest, "and her mammary glands extruded nutrition. I had to research how it worked, but that's not important. What's important is that they did this several times a day for a couple years, and I got used to watching." The nozzles protruded from under his chestplate, the holding tanks protected but the equipment exposed in a disturbingly vulnerable way that made Astrotrain uncomfortable. Octane flicked the tips with his fingers a few times as if testing their sensitivity. "It's...I don't know how to describe it. It's intimate."

Astrotrain slid a glance at Blitzwing in a silent plea for sanity, but his fellow shuttleformer had apparently fastened on something Octane had said. "Waaaaait. Your wife?"

They both gave Blitzwing an impatient look. Everyone knew Octane had wives. "Yeah?"

"How'd she have a baby if she's married to you?"

Astrotrain slowly lost his jaw as he turned to gape at Octane.

Who renewed his concentration on the nozzles. "Never you mind!"

"But - "

"Who's first?" Octane asked in a loud, talking-over-Blitzwing voice. A lot of Decepticons used that voice, Astrotrain had found.

"Uh..."

"But - "

"Blitzwing! C'mere." Octane grabbed for the confused mech's head, bringing it smack into his chestplate so hard Blitzwing's nose dented.

"Ow! Fragger!"

Freeing one hand, Octane used it to direct the closest nozzle toward Blitzwing's mouth with the attitude of someone plugging a hole. Blitzwing made a startled noise and bit down. Octane flinched, arms jerking around Blitzwing's head, which effectively crushed the flailing mech into sullen submission. A muffled complaint preceded another jerk announcing a second bite, but Blitzwing was fairly well smushed.

Face-first into an energon source, which no Decepticon would turn down even if this lactation thing was weird as frag. He sucked on the nozzle.

Octane settled back slowly, wings relaxing down the longer Blitzwing drank. And the more fuel he got, the more relaxed Blitzwing became. Pretty soon he was draped across Octane's lap, nuzzled up under the fuel tanker's chestplate to draw greedily on the nozzle. The hand holding him in place had become a gentle hold cradling his head close, merely a suggestion of shelter and intimacy that had Astrotrain frankly staring. Octane reclined slightly into his chair, peering down at the mech feeding directly from his holding tanks, and his thumb rubbed slow circles on the back of Blitzwing's helm.

It was alien. It was strange. Blitzwing shut off his optics and let him do it, and Astrotrain decided he'd take his turn after all.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	77. Pt 77: Nipple fetish

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 77:**_ _"_ Nipple fetish _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Not many people could silence a room when they walked in, at least not when the room was full of Wreckers, but Impactor had polished his bullbars to a fine shine. Jaws dropped around the room. Even Whirl's optic blew wide. Trying to judge his reactions by facial expression alone was a fool's game, but there was something to be said for the betraying _whrrrrr_ of his rotors kicking on.

Impactor smirked at them. Swiping someone's drink off a table, he brought his other hand up to toy with the shiny metal. "See somethin' ya like?"

A finger curled around a bar and tugged. Springer tried and failed to swallow. He made an interesting choking noise.

Impactor winked before slugging back the drink, turning on his heel, and sauntering from the room with his thick hips swaying from side to side hard enough to pop his aft like an invitation.

Blurr was the first one out the door chasing him, but it was a close race.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	78. Pt 78: Aft fetish

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 78:**_ " _Aft fetish_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"This is a terrible place to meditate."

"No no, hear me out: it's the greatest place. Ever."

Drift gave Rodimus a look that doubted him all the way down to his spoiler. Rodimus grinned back at him.

"Trust me."

That's was the problem: Drift did. It was how Rodimus had convinced him to move meditation practice to the medibay, which had sounded great in theory when Rodimus was going on about the peace and quiet. For some reason, it had completely slipped Drift's mind that no medibay he'd ever been in actually fit that description. Medibays were noisy places. Someone was always adjusting equipment, cleaning parts, coming in, or leaving. Ratchet was many things, but sedate he was not. Add in First Aid bustling about and Ambulon's gravelly voice giving clipped orders in the background, and the medibay was the last place in the ship they should have gone to meditate.

But Rodimus was giving him the Roguish Grin with bonus Mischievous Optics, and Drift knew he had to at least humor him. There was something going on here that he wasn't seeing yet. Well, he'd find out soon enough. Rodimus wasn't the patient sort. It would come out sooner than later.

Hopefully sometime before Drift lost the last of his patience. He took a deep in-vent and counted to 100 before looking at Rodimus again. "Stop squirming."

Rodimus wriggled, scooting his aft along the wall they were sitting against. "Yeah, yeah, just…gotta…" Peering down at the fist-sized crystal Drift had lent him as a focus, he squinted. Another finger-length, and he squinted again. "There. Okay."

Drift looked at the crystal. It's not that he didn't understand using the reflection of light on the facets to empty the mind. He'd been the one attempting to teach the technique to Rodimus, after all. It's just that Rodimus sure didn't look as though he was meditating.

"Roddy. What are you concentrating on?" he asked, aiming for casual.

"Mmm. Mmm? Shhh, meditating."

Oh, come on, like Drift believed that? He drummed his fingers on his knee as he watched his friend look intently into the crystal. When he looked at his own crystal focus, it showed him gleaming light patterns. Beautiful, but not really the kind of thing that tended to occupy Rodimus' attention for longer than 'ooo, shiny.'

Drift frowned slightly at the hunk of crystal. No, wait, the way he had it turned gave him a rather distracting view of Ambulon's desk. It was a blurry picture deep in the crystal, a trick of the light hitting the facets just right. Ugh, the clutter that mech collected on his desk was terrible for Drift's peace of mind. He reached out to turn the crystal a bit.

A thought suddenly hit him, and Drift looked up, optics sharp. There was Ambulon. There was First Aid. Both of them were harmlessly occupied, and Rodimus' crystal couldn't possibly be showing him anything interesting there. However, there was also Ratchet, bent over a repair slab to spare a back aching from sitting in a chair for too long. Drift had politely not stared at the back turned to them, but -

He turned his crystal, watching it intently. Blurry ceiling, blurry desk, blurry blobs that moved about, blur blur…oh.

"It's a great place to meditate," Rodimus said happily after five minutes of quiet contemplation of that aft. Drift didn't disagree.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	79. Pt 79: Wings

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 79:**_ _"Wings_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Most of the Autobots understood the attraction to the Prime, even if they didn't quite get the religious angle Skyfire had arrived at it from. The Aerialbots were the exception, however.

"He's a **groundframe** ," Skydive said, but he put up his hands the second it came out. "I mean, not like I'm prejudiced against groundframes **existing** , but I don't get the attraction, that's all. He's got…tires." It seemed to genuinely puzzle him.

Slingshot sneered, not bothering to dress his disgust up in apologetic requests for an explanation. "He's clunky and groundbound and he **can't fly**. He's ugly!"

Air Raid clonked him across the back of the helm before Silverbolt had to, which was convenient as it was probably breaking a rule for a commander to hit his subordinates for being rude glitches. And Fireflight added, "He's the **Prime**! You can't say that about him!"

Skyfire wasn't offended by any of it. He smiled gently down at the shorter mechs. "Have you ever dated a groundframe?"

It was telling how all their optics cut suddenly toward Silverbolt, then just as suddenly away. Slingshot looked more disgusted. Skyfire felt a sense of sorrow that they had lost the innocence of their first relationship to someone who'd hurt them all in some way. It had obviously not ended well and had left them with a bias against anyone with wheels instead of wings.

He tried again. "Have you ever dated a groundframe who likes wings? Enjoys them?" Ah, there. A sea of baffled faces, and Skyfire's gentle smile widened. "Then you are missing out on one of the great joys of dating across frametypes. Our differences are there to be appreciated. I like Optimus' windshield, his wheels, yes, even his trailer. He, in turn, worships my wings."

A mass blink.

Another one, as he very nearly saw their world view abruptly turn on their heads.

"If I may suggest someone," he said with delicate care, "I believe you might give Sideswipe a try. He might not suit your tastes in the long term, but from the way he watches all of your wings, he would be a good sample of what you could have." He nodded to Skydive. "If you're interested in discovering the attraction yourself, that is."

Wings twitched around the room.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	80. Pt 80: Accent kink

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 80:**_ _"accent kink_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Perceptor had an accent.

Brainstorm had never quite nailed down what it was. Not a _where_ , but a _what_. He'd heard other people from Perceptor's home district talk, and Perceptor didn't have their cant. Sure, there was a distinctive shape to how the scientist's mouth shaped the roundness of certain vowels, but that wasn't the accent Brainstorm thought of when he heard Perceptor speak.

There was a definite hint of Iaconian in the hard stops, clipped ending consonants trained into him. They were there to make each word distinctive when spoken into a microphone. Perceptor sounded like every other scientist who'd been in the Science Academy, taught to narrate laboratory procedure in an impersonal, detached voice. _Starscream_ slipped into the habit of talking like that when observing something. What made Perceptor unique was how he stuck with it even when excited.

Mm. Still not it. Maybe it was word choice, not just how they were said. An accent wasn't just how the words came out. Sometimes it was the slang.

No, not slang. The opposite of slang. Perceptor's accent was an impeccable use of the perfectly correct terminology.

Brainstorm lit up. "That's it! Ha!"

Across the lab, Perceptor looked up from his work. "Did you find something?"

"No! I mean, yes, but no. Not me." He pointed a finger at him. "You! Say something!"

An unamused optic and targeting scope monocle stared Brainstorm down. "What precisely do you wish me to say?"

Any other person put on the spot by that demand would have unthinkingly said something short, confused, even rude. " _Like what?"_ or _"No."_ Brainstorm could expect a deadpan, _"Something,"_ from the crankier mechs. Perceptor's default language wasn't the simplistic vocabulary everyone else had been brought online with, however. Taken off-guard, he fell back on relatively complicated grammatical structures populated by multisyllabic terms other people had to study for years to use correctly.

Delighted, Brainstorm clapped his hands and bounced in place. "Water!"

Perceptor frowned. "Dihydrogen monoxide?"

Ohhh, he hadn't even simplified it to H2O. He'd said the whole chemical formula in longhand.

Brainstorm melted. No _wonder_ he loved hearing Perceptor talk. That was the best accent _ever_.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	81. Pt 81: Competency kink

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 81:**_ _"_ _Competency kink_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Oh, y'did not just," the rest of the meeting table heard right before Jazz literally jumped out of his chair and up onto the table top, visor in an unfocused glare at the far corner. "Y'did. Y' emotionless drone, y'did." He looked down at the pile of tablets he'd accidentally crushed underfoot, grimaced, and shrugged apology at Prowl and Optimus Prime, who looked irritated and guiltily relieved respectively.

He nodded curtly to the table in general. "Gotta go. Infiltrators." He jumped off the table and sped out the door, Red Alert at his heels.

Later, the rest of the officers would find out that the reason the general alarm hadn't gone off was that only one, very specific room had been targeted by Rumble and Frenzy. Not that Red Alert wasn't rechecking everything just in case, but it seemed that Soundwave had been out to make a point.

And that point was apparently a rude gesture in Jazz's direction. "They changed all my music files to Ace of Base!" Jazz complained, aggrieved, and Blaster leaned around Prowl to give him a weird look.

"What's wrong with Ace of Base?"

"I don't want a whole library archive of nothin' but their greatest hits!"

"Hmm."

"Don't even judge me, Blaster, I know where your archives are, an' I'll do it."

"Mech, you wouldn't dare."

Jazz gave him a somewhat deranged glare.

"…right, shutting up now."

In revenge, the next time Jazz had a free moment while waltzing around the Decepticons' underwater base, he hacked into the official files and changed all instances of Soundwave's name to Shockwave's. Along with a few creative misspellings of the Cassette's names, too, just for funzies.

That took Soundwave a little while to track down, but the good news was that the Autobots now knew the Decepticon payroll schedule. Cool. Shockwave must have been thrilled to get twice the pay.

Soundwave's madcap group of hellions set up, filmed, and distributed a fake porno starring one of the Stunticons painted up as Jazz. The humans had no idea what they were playing as Breaking News, but the Autobots collectively shrieked for Primus' mercy as 'Jazz' interfaced with several Decepticons in a row behind the news anchors' heads. Yeah, that one wasn't going to go away any time soon. The humans had copies.

Jazz did some digging back on Cybertron and revealed a previously concealed link between Soundwave and the Science Academy's disciplinary council. He made sure Starscream found that bit of evidence, and Soundwave nearly ended up dead metal as the Air Commander tore into him. Through Megatron's intervention alone did Soundwave survive, and Starscream took off for parts unknown, presumably to brood over how far back Megatron had conspired to ruin his life. From the evidence, Jazz had no idea how much of an influence Soundwave had actually had in denying the rescue search for Skyfire or kicking Starscream out of the Science Academy. Like Starscream, he assumed the worst of the fragger.

Somehow, mysteriously, a detailed and excruciatingly spelled-out testimony of the many and varied ways one Autobot, Jazz by name, had violated the Autobot Code in field interrogations, spy missions, and underhanded assassinations found its way straight into Optimus Prime's inbox. It was signed by every surviving witness over on the Decepticon side. Jazz spent an extremely uncomfortable month on administrative leave as the Prime raked his spark over the coals in a long investigation into whether or not he had the moral fiber to be trusted as an Autobot officer, much less the Head of Special Operations. Nothing like one's leader and Prime discovering he'd been lying - mostly by omission, but lies nonetheless - to him all along.

Jazz flung an electroblade from halfway across the battlefield. It lodged through Soundwave's forehelm, almost irreparably impaling his main CPU.

"Foreplay: enough?" Soundwave asked flatly the next time the Decepticons got lucky and caught the cunning Autobot saboteur.

Sagging as the last blast of electricity ended, Jazz grinned crookedly up at him with soot-blackened teeth. "Get over here and frag me."

"Autobot: will break," Soundwave promised.

"Y' promise?" Jazz winked half his visor on and off. "Nah. I planted a bomb 'fore y'caught me."

Soundwave sent out an alert to evacuate base even as he bent down, and Jazz strained against the chains to meet him.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

There were things a mech had to understand, coming up in the ranks.

People were obstacles. Anybody in his way had to be eliminated, but that was the price of ambition. Vortex, despite the sadomasochism Onslaught had appealed to, actually had that most glorified of Decepticon traits. He had it in spades. He had ambitions to be a top interrogator, recognized and feared, and he wanted to rise through the ranks until he was recognized as the best in his field.

The sole exception to the rule of obstacles were role models. A mech either made his own way in the world completely - which was pretty unrealistic considering how many Cybertronians existed, and seriously, nobody was unique anymore, somebody had done everything at this point - or he had a role model. Several, probably, but Vortex really had just the one.

Soundwave. Unattainable, distant, ever-loyal Soundwave. More importantly, Soundwave the scary-as-frag technopath who could pry secrets right out of a mech's mind using conventional and unconventional means. The guy practically wrote all of Intelligence's PDs and OPs. Vortex had admired the mech behind the division for ages.

He hadn't followed Soundwave's example in loyalty to Megatron, but, well, arguably he'd sort of followed it in sticking to Onslaught.

Regardless, the long and short of it was that Vortex had ended up under Soundwave's direct command on Earth. It was a lot like having an energon goodie dangled out of reach while starving. It didn't matter how perfectly he followed PD and OP - and despite his many and varied misbehaviors, Vortex stuck to division policy and procedure like they were stapled to his visor - Soundwave never looked his way with anything but open disapproval. Which he could get into, honestly. Give him a bit of a smack on the aft, and Vortex could be all kinds of into that. He was a bad, bad 'copter. Punish him, sir!

Vortex swallowed hard and looked back to his tools, strangely embarrassed as Soundwave looked across the brig at him, visor narrowed in, what? Suspicion? Disgust? Either way, the 'copter locked his fans down and pretended he wasn't a squirming mass of arousal watching his boss at work.

It was extremely trying to be in constant company with a superior officer and rolemodel he wanted to frag him in every corner available.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It was going to be one of those days.

"Be clearer," he ordered Brainstorm, who had the audacity to look annoyed at the order. For some reason, everything the weapons engineer had been saying filled Megatron with a vague, unplaceable apprehension. Anxiety, while a perfectly normal thing to feel when talking to Brainstorm, should have a concrete cause. Megatron wasn't one to give weight to ideas like 'instinct' or 'gut feeling.' There was either a cause or not.

Perceptor, of course, walked into the lab, gave them both one of those blank-faced looked of annoyance he'd apparently perfected during the war, and strode over to shut off a machine Megatron hadn't even noticed running in the background. It was the main lab. Brainstorm had a tendency to fill it with oddly menacing machines with strange names. Back straight and face unreadable, Perceptor then walked back out of the lab.

Megatron immediately felt better, although he had the urge to call Perceptor back to control Brainstorm. "Right," he muttered, looking down at the weapons engineer. "Try explaining now."

"It won't make any difference! That wasn't my Apprehension Machine, I'll have you know. It was my - "

"Megs!" Red, gold, and bothersome bounced into the lab.

" - Early Warning System." Brainstorm threw his hands up in the air without due caution, and vials of unidentifiable substances flew through the air. Perceptor appeared in the doorway behind Rodimus as if summoned, visible optic already narrowed in utmost disapproval.

Of one mind, Megatron and Rodimus vacated the premises before the shouting could start. It didn't take a genius to get out of the way of one of those fights.

Well, at least the mounting anxiety had turned out to have a cause. "What do you want?" Megatron asked without any interest. He strode briskly down the hall. He didn't have a destination in mind other than 'away.'

Rodimus, as always, didn't take the hint. He sped along in Megatron's wake, passed, and proceeded to dance along backward in front of him. "I'm taking off for the meteor surfing competition - "

"What?!"

" - and here's what you have to do while I'm gone. I know you're no good at this, but it's either you or, uh, you, so one or the other of you has to take over while I'm gone."

A brief lost look touched Rodimus' ridiculously mobile face, and Megatron shook away any feeling of sympathy for the fool's obvious wish that Deadlock - Drift, the traitor's name was Drift, and Megatron had no moral high ground on Decepticons defecting to the Autobots anymore, if anything he owed the mech a humble apology - was here to fill the empty Third-in-Command position. Megatron had once made the mistake of putting forth a list of names to fill that open rank. He'd evaluated the Autobots onboard carefully for their potential, and Ultra Magnus and Rodimus had simply stared at him in united affront that he'd dared. The position already had a candidate. It wasn't open to promoting someone into it. It was open because the officer it belonged to hadn't come back to refill it yet.

A tablet thrust into his hands derailed Megatron's thoughts, and he found himself scrolling through an absurd list of things to do in Rodimus' absence. "What is this? I'm not doing this."

"Yes you are!" Rodimus backflipped over a minibot without missing a beat, and to the smaller Autobot's credit, he hardly seemed to notice he'd been backflipped over. He just went on his way while Megatron side-eyed him incredulously.

Rodimus waved a hand to reclaim his attention, however. "Look, it's not that hard. Rung needs to get out of his office at least once a week, so you just have to run over Rewind in the hall outside his door. Or, er, I suppose you could just call him, but running Rewind over gets Chromedome to get all offended at you, and then you can have a really loud blow-out in the hallway until Rung comes out to calm everyone down, and then you can push him into joining you at the bar for the free drinks you're buying Rewind and Chromedome - "

This was absolutely the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. Megatron looked further down the list. It was actually a schedule.

" - you have to get him to drop one 'casualism' or he regresses, trust me, you don't want him to regress. Just pretend meeting in the bar for a staff meeting is nothing big. It shouldn't be that much of a problem, 'cause I've been making him do it for years, but I know you guys like to do official meetings in closed rooms and whatnot. Tell him I said he had to do it, and for frag's sake, let Swerve get him his drink or he'll stick with low-yield stuff the whole night. He really does like the stuff Swerve serves him, but he's got such a stick up his aft he won't order it himself. He's got that waste-not-want-not mentality, though, so if you put a drink in front of him he'll drink it. Swerve knows everything 'bout Mags, just let him handle the conversation if you don't know what to say, but try to get a few jokes in, I'm not letting him go back to how he was. Rung says he's making good progress, whatever that means, and oh yeah, about Cyclonus - "

The listed schedule was disjointed, rambling, and full of harmful stunts, unnecessary showmanship, and jokes in extremely poor taste. The more Megatron puzzled it out, the more it resembled repeated rounds, each lap around the ship involving more and more of the 200+ crewmembers as Rodimus went around making a fool of himself and everyone he touched.

" - seriously, he's a whackjob, a total freakzoid to the nth degree, but there's a reason he's in every mission we ever throw together. Just don't tell him I said that. No, really, don't tell him. His ego's almost as big as mine. If you tell him, it'll get bigger yet, and I'm not losing that competition to Whirl, no way. Uh, right, no idea how you'll make it look like they're just found parts, but I've been giving them to Rung. Or throwing them into a pile in the old parts bin on the gun range. It's probably not a good thing to do to clock parts, but they keep disappearing, so I guess he's finding them. Somebody's taking them, anyway. They're kinda expensive, but so's repairing people's faces, and right, the medibay. Mags handles the ordering for that, but don't tell him I put in a parts order for the Rod Pod Squad - "

Megatron stared at the tablet in his hand long after Rodimus finished explaining what he'd have to do to take up the slack. And there would be slack. Megatron would have never believed it before now, but his co-captain actually did something around here. Just…not anything on a recognizable list of duties.

Somehow, he'd have to translate these into things he could do himself.

Tucking the tablet away, Megatron turned to go find Ultra Magnus, and he ignored the heat in the bottom of his tanks as he did.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	82. Pt 82: Caretaking kink

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 82: "** Caretaking kink_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Catch him under the right circumstances, and Pharma had the patience of a saint. With his nurses during surgery? Never. As someone bled out under his hands? Not a chance. But give him a conscious patient during an emergency procedure, and unknown depths of care were revealed to an incredulous world. People who'd worked with him half his career gaped in shock as he soothed a dying mech's last moments alive. The response crew lashed by the biting edge of his comments all the way out into the field did double-takes as he talked calm reassurance to the person they'd flown out to save.

Pharma had fought long and hard to overcome the Functionalists, and he'd done it for one reason: he belonged in the medical field. Whether or not his body had been forged for surgery wasn't half as important as whether or not he felt the urgent, implacable need driving him to fix, to repair, to help.

The first two urges, everyone in a hospital felt. That's why they were there. The third, everyone in Pharma's hospital would have bet actual shanix he didn't give a lead-iron piece of scrap about.

Oh, if only they could see him now.

"The red wires connects to the - blue wire. The blue wire connects to the - green wire. The green wire connects to - your tire! And that's - the way - it rolls," the hospital's most up-tight, uber-professional surgeon sang, absentmindedly swaying from side to side. He glanced up at the bleary optics peering at him in fascination, smiled, and freed one busy hand to boop the young mech on the nose. Optics crossed to follow his finger. At this age, just barely freed from the metal field of the hot spot, most sedatives wouldn't work but distraction most certainly did. Hence Pharma singing an extremely silly song about circuit connections as he gently rewired a damaged section in the new-forged's leg. "One more time? Alright. The circuitboard's sitting here - amire. Tangled up colors of - your wire."

Ratchet worked on the mech's back as Pharma sang through the song again, and he smiled a bit as he worked. A dull, warm glow slowly dissolved the bottom out of his spark the longer his partner patiently entertained their patient. People who didn't know any better and couldn't possibly be expected to saw this side of the prickly surgeon. They didn't look at him as a jet first and doctor second. This little patient saw someone who took care of him, comforted him when he was distressed, and took the pain away.

It was just how Pharma worked. Competent people, people he expected to keep up with him, people prone to judging him for his frametype or his skill level - they would never witness Pharma's hidden, protected vulnerable undercarriage. Cybertron hadn't been kind to Pharma. He'd learned early on that showing softness meant it became a target.

But Ratchet knew it was there. It came out rarely, but every time it did, it elevated a greatly talented surgeon into one of the truly spectacular medics of their age, and Ratchet felt an entirely inappropriate thrill every time he caught a glimpse of that person. Warm, fuzzy, and electric, it wrapped heat around his tanks until it was all he could do to write out the treatment recommendations for the next shift as Pharma closed up, still humming softly to the dozing newspark.

"Long day," the surgeon sighed as he finally rinsed his hands. He looked tired. Patience took more out of him than his habitual briskness. For the moment, exhaustion blunted his sharp edges away, exposing something tender underneath.

The surgical suite doors were hardly shut behind them when Ratchet rounded on him. "Come here."

Pharma blinked. "WhaMM!" His optics shot comically wide as the shorter medic grabbed him around the waist and swept him into a dipped kiss. He flailed at the windows, where already-stunned nurses were getting a second shock tonight.

Ratchet didn't care who was watching. He'd been waiting all night for his turn.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	83. Pt 83: Nesting instinct

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 83:**_ _"nesting instinct_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

They were looking for something.

"Get out of there," Breakdown gruffly, bending down to look under the engine. The ship didn't communicate to many people, but it knew enough to alert the nearest crewmember when things got weird. Insecticons nesting under the main engine mounts definitely counted as weird.

Annoyed clicking told Breakdown where to shove it.

He frowned at the mass of slick, chitin-like armor sliding and shifting in the dark cranny. "I don't need to speak screeky-cleeky to translate that," he warned the swarm of critters. "Sort of how this won't need translating." He shoved his hammer into the open space, and the clicking became angry screeches.

Insecticons boiled out of the other side of the mount, pushed by the force. Breakdown grinned fiercely, turned his hammer inside the cramped cranny, and shoved again. "Aww, you didn't like that? Tough slag. Scram, creeps."

Hissing, alien-freaky Insecticons scaled the engine room walls, their many insectile optics reflecting the light as they reached the walkways. The few crewmembers that had stuck around after calling for Breakdown's help started to look nervous. The Eradicons generally handled the Insecticons by regarding them as fellow grunts with particularly poor choices in altmode, but that illusion didn't last long when the chattering, whooping calls echoed through the halls. Why couldn't the Insecticons use standard communication means like the rest of them?

Yanking his hammer free, Breakdown stood back up with a grunt. He eyed the Insecticons clinging to the walls. This was the third time he'd broken up a nesting clump of Insecticons. They seemed to like finding pockets to fill, cramming too many of themselves into too-small areas.

He narrowed his optic at the pests. "What? What're you looking at me for?"

Hissing, spitting conversation went back and forth between the bugs before they reluctantly vacated the area. Rubbing his optic patch, Breakdown shook his head and stumped toward the nearest ladder up to the walkways. This was exactly why Knock Out was never called for these problems. Knock Out was plenty shiny enough to fascinate the horde. That wasn't the problem. His polish could keep individual Insecticons docile during check-ups, their faceted optics trained on the glitter of light off his chrome, heads bobbing and weaving to watch the shadows dance, but he lacked physical strength. Breakdown was called in to intimidate groups like this.

But chasing the Insecticons out of their hidey-holes wasn't solving the underlying problem. He'd spent two days plodding from one end of the ship to the other, responding to alerts from the ship itself or weirded-out crew who'd stumbled on another crack in the ship jam-packed full of eerie rustles and haunting cries. Route one hole full of bugs, and they'd just cram into another spot.

The problem was that they were looking for something. What that something was, Breakdown didn't know. The ship didn't know. The Eradicons didn't know. The Eradicons didn't _want_ to know. The whole thing made them uncomfortable.

The Eradicons just plain didn't get why the Insecticons were so fragging tactile. Every opportunity the pesks got, they pressed in close to each others. Given a whole room to occupy, they condensed into a single unit of buzzing wings. Their heads moved as one, optics all zeroing in on the same targets, their legs hitting the floor in sync. Knock Out had turned his usual rule of 2-to-1 into 1-or-nothing. He typically insisted two healthy Eradicons accompany any wounded mech in order to restrain the casualty. Insecticons, however, came into the medibay alone or not at all. Knock Out didn't do crowding. It made him claustrophobic.

Breakdown didn't mind it, but he knew most people didn't see being in a crowd as companionable company. Most Decepticons had fought too hard for the space they got. It had taken destroying the Senate just to win the right to exist anywhere, much less to be acknowledged as deserving the space they currently occupied. Given their way, the Eradicons would build bunks the size of entire rooms, recharging sprawled out to take up as much space as physically possible.

The ship alerted him to a new problem, and Breakdown heaved a sigh. He turned to trudge in the right direction, giving the blinking light on the ship map only part of his attention.

Until he made the turn onto the right hallway and realized where he was headed.

He slowed to a stop, not that he'd been going very fast in the first place, and looked at his own door. It was open. The bizarre howling warble he'd come to know too well came out of it.

"Y'know what? Whatever." Turning on his heel, he left them to it. It wasn't as though he kept anything special in his room, and half the time he crashed on Knock Out's bunk anyway. If it kept the blasted creatures happy, he'd let them take his room. Maybe that was what they were looking for.

Infesting his room did calm the worst of the alerts, so he counted it a win. Sure, he lost his room to a swarm of Insecticons, but he'd sacrificed more than a room to the Decepticons. At least it wasn't another optic.

The chitin-slick swarm of bugs on the walls made everyone else in his hall nervous enough to keep it quiet. It was what made him venture back down it a few days later. The Insecticons made a lot of ambient noise, clicks and whirrs and warbles, but they didn't hold parties blasting lousy music. Or soap operas. Knock Out swore it was his new mission to track down the first Eradicon to pick up Earth soap operas and make him pay. Breakdown had offered to smash the stupid fragger flat.

So it was worth the risk to push into his room and check out the situation. And the situation was...Insecticons everywhere. It was a little nauseating watching them crawl over and around each other, but for some reason, the bunk was free of bugs. That was good enough for Breakdown. It'd been a long day, he had a processor ache, and there were no soap operas playing in the background.

He shoved his way to the bunk and crashed, determinedly tuning out the agitated critters milling in his wake.

"Wuh da fra'..?" he mumbled when he woke up.

His temperature gadget had woken him. The heavy weight on top of him and pressed in from every side was more comfortable than anything, but the bodies surrounding him kept his vents closed. He couldn't breathe.

"Geroff," he said thickly, elbowing the nearest overly warm body. "Too hot."

One of those familiar, high-pitched cries filled the room, and the Insecticon moved. Of course, another one moved in at the same moment, and Breakdown suddenly felt much more awake as a long, nimble tongue snaked into the cables of his neck. Oh. No wonder he felt so warm.

He onlined his optic to squint at the Insecticon lying on him. "Huh?"

Mandibles spread wide, the Insecticon nuzzled against his cheek. The points of its mandibles scraped gently along the sides of his helm.

"Huh."

It struck him out of nowhere in one of those half-asleep leaps of logic that the room hummed almost quiet. The restless, searching behavior had been replaced by contentment.

Breakdown let his helm thunk back on the bunk. After a second of thought, he called up a private short-range comm channel. "Hey, Knock Out?"

"Mm? Do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah. But I made a mistake, and I thought you should know."

The doctor scoffed sleepily into the connection. "A mistake. Like what?"

"I kinda forgot to turn off my swag."

The old joke won a snort of laughter, and Breakdown could nearly see the smile pulling at Knock Out's lips. "Did you wake up covered in glitches?"

Breakdown slung an arm up over the Insecticon investigating his neck. "Yeah."

"Lucky fragger. Tell me about it in the morning."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that."

The comm channel closed with a decisive click. Breakdown grinned and let his hand settle where it willed. Time to make sure there was something of substance to report come morning.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	84. Pt 84: Morning sex

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 84:**_ _"morning sex_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The first time Sandstorm propositioned Octane, it was with the kind of a logic a Decepticon would use. "You like morning sex?"

"Uh…" Who didn't? But it was midafternoon. Octane glanced up at Earth's sun, looked back to Sandstorm, and shrugged. "Yeah?"

"Good. It's morning somewhere. Let's frag." And with that, Sandstorm grabbed Octane by the forearm to eagerly drag him off for morning-somewhere debauchery.

Morning sex was the best. Fortunately, in all the vastness of the universe, it was always morning somewhere, and Sandstorm seemed determined to greet each and every single dawn with at least one overload.

This was Octane's kind of logic.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	85. Pt 85: Hypnosis

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 85:** __"_ hypnosis _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You are getting sleepy, veeeeery sleepy," mumbled against his shoulder, and Mirage chuckled softly. The finger he was circling around Cliffjumper's sensor horn didn't falter. The gentle tracing seemed to hold the minibot entranced, a constant contact that occupied much of the fiesty mech's attention for some reason.

He had no idea why it worked, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Mirage didn't have nearly the energy his lover did, and he wanted at least some time for quiet every night. Hence the trick with his finger and Cliffjumper's horn.

And if he found the action meditative, well, then things just worked out for both of them.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	86. Pt 86: Wax play

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 86:**_ _"wax play_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It wasn't slow.

That might have been the appeal.

Nothing about their relationship had been slow. When Starscream first thawed to him, it was in a sudden rush. Passion sprang from trust in a cascade that overwhelmed them both and left them dripping hot. When they resumed where the ice left them hanging, it was in fiery hate and tangled confusion, shouted words and misunderstandings that made their couplings fast, started and over with in the space of minutes.

This was as sudden as Starscream's rage, as deliberate as Skyfire wished he could be when facing his lover across the battlefield or pinning him down in the dirt that had become their bed. Wax dribbled across his plating, and it left a stinging trail of heat. It shouldn't be as shocking as it was, but he was cold. He was always cold. His metal remembered the ice, and only the heat of Starscream's hands scraped through the frost.

Wax hit armor hot and molten, soft but hardening quickly, and it happened fast. It was fast, it was quick, it was hot but didn't last, and once it was over, it flaked away. His plating felt twice as cold in its wake.

Skyfire poured the wax in winding trails across himself. He always ran out before he was ready, and, as ever, he was left wanting.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	87. Pt 87: Erotic branding

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 87:**_ "Erotic branding _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The Tower garrison hated Shockwave. They hated him for taking them offline during the great stasis-lock periods that characterized Megatron's absence. They hated him for not waking them up when the Autobots raided the supply stores. They hated how he woke them when he finally brought them back online.

The bleak, mono-optic face greeted each waking soldier, staring straight into their bleary optics as they shook off the stasis protocols. "Lord Megatron calls upon you to protect Cybertron," he said to all of them, to Acid Storm and his triad in particular this time.

"We answer," all of them said on automatic, but Acid Storm croaked the words more fervently, having been woken up more frequently than most for this particular duty. "Command me," he said, knowing and hating his own anticipation.

The brand pressed into the old scar, purple and healed but suddenly burnt in again as if new, as if he'd just taken the oath and was going to go on his first mission as a Decepticon. He gritted his teeth against a scream as loyalty was tested and reaffirmed one more time. He wasn't _weak_ , and he didn't scream, he didn't scream. When the brand lifted away, elation and giddy triumph flooded him, and Acid Storm stood tall and proud as it sang through him in time to the pounding throb of his fuel pump.

"Fly," Shockwave said impassively as pain sang across the newly-awakened Seeker's wings.

The Tower garrison took to the sky hating him for how much they loved that sensation.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	88. Pt 88: Tires

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 88:**_ _"tires_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

Substituting tires for the hoverboards they used on Cybertron caused more problems than digesting unleaded did. Unleaded gave mechs the hiccups. Tires caused a strange series of visits to the medbay with no clear cause and no real solution.

The trend disturbed Ratchet, but only because he couldn't do anything. There didn't seem to be a root _cause_ to all the complaints beyond vague, squirming, pointed finger at tires. The main complaint seemed to be intense oversensitivity. Everyone who came to the medbay had at least one tale of flinching when someone bumped against them in the corridors, or sitting down at a duty station on the bridge and nearly causing a scene as the chair back - designed to be uncomfortable, admittedly - caused a progressive, _worsening_ case of flustered jitters.

Hearing that from Cliffjumper was one thing. However, Prowl and Optimus Prime coming in within hours of each other convinced Ratchet that something definitely had to be done. The latter ducked his head and mumbled, ashamed; the former was utterly mortified that he'd been buzzing with excess charge by halfway through his shift.

Ratchet didn't know what to do. When rubber met road, everything was fine. Nobody had come in with a complaint about their tires in altmode. It was when people transformed that these 'wheel' things became a nonstop source of processor aches for him. They itched, they rubbed, they were shockingly sensitive under completely strange circumstances, they hurt if pinched, and touching them at the wrong moment rattled Mirage down to his core. He wasn't the only one. Jazz had recently become a hyperventilating ball of raw nerves running himself ragged in the training room attempting to remaster his own body. He was unable to handle having a body part that _rotated_ when he least expected it.

His explanation of his new training regime broke down when trying to explain why his tires turning upset him so. Ratchet had his suspicions.

Suspicions that turned into a tentative hypothesis the day Sunstreaker somehow melted Tracks into a puddle in the middle of the common room for the next shift to find when they got off-duty. A blissfully-smiling puddle that looked absolutely fabulous (his words, and for once everyone agreed because chrome hubcaps = niiiiiiiice), but it made Ratchet think about tires in a whole new light. Sunstreaker hadn't slipped into a creative phase for custom bodywork since the fad for tricked-out interfacing equipment. What did he know that Ratchet didn't?

He'd have called the golden frontliner in to demand answers of, but Sunstreaker had locked himself in his quarters to experiment with chromework. Well, Ratchet was the CMO for good reason. If Sunstreaker could figure it out, so could he. In the meantime, he stocked up on temporary sensor scramblers to download into all the people coming in. The _Ark -_ wide tire sensitivity was reaching the level of an epidemic. An epidemic of very mild, annoying, and extremely embarrassing proportions, but it was causing a lot of unnecessary stress in the crew. Ratchet had to figure this out.

After studying the problem for a while, he went to Wheeljack because Wheeljack would never turn down the chance for a crazy experiment. In fact, he might have been insulted if left out.

"I want to try something," Ratchet said bluntly once he explained the problem.

"I'm in."

"No surprise there. Sit down." Impatient, he pushed Wheeljack down into a seat and knelt down in front of the chair. Wheeljack blinked down at him as he bent down further to pick up one of the engineer's feet. Setting on his knee, Ratchet examined it closely.

It looked alien and strange as all their human-designed altmode parts did, but on the surface, he saw nothing harmful in the rubber. Rolling along roads on primitive devices like wheels didn't hurt anyone, however weird tires were for a species used to hoverboards.

"Have your tires been bothering you?" he asked.

"Er...a little, but you know how I get when I'm handed new things to look at." Wheeljack waved a little helplessly as if to indicate all of Earth. _Such_ a delightful new project for him.

Given all the shiny new toys humankind produced, Ratchet estimated that Wheeljack's tires were probably at the high end of the spectrum if the mech had noticed a problem at all. He nodded thoughtfully. "Good. I know I've done this to your hoverboards before. I want you to run a comparison between the last time I did this and right now."

Before Wheeljack could ask what he meant, the medic bent to his task.

"Nngh!"

The task being a slow, careful exploration of Wheeljack's ankle tire with his tongue and mouth, fingers drawing little circles on the rubber. He palmed the curve, cradling it in his hand to rock back and forth on the axle. He squeezed, letting himself _feel_ the springy texture as the rubber bulged between his fingers. He dug his fingertips into the treads for a moment before letting go, only to lick quick flicks of his tongue over the tight black rubber. Wheeljack's gut-deep grunt was swiftly joined by little whimpers as Ratchet nipped at the rubber, teeth indenting the material. It's oddly erotic in a way Ratchet hadn't predicted. Yes, it was always arousing to hear Wheeljack gasp his name, but he'd never torn a moan from anyone by simply exhaling over the wet trails left by his mouth. He'd never reduced anyone to dazedly staring at the ceiling, vents flipping open and shut, just by a few open-mouthed kisses.

Wheeljack shuddered, his vocalizer squawking short bleeps of sound between crackles of static, and Ratchet delicately closed his front teeth on a lugnut.

"Gnnk!"

Ratchet jerked his head out of range of the sudden motion and squinted. "Was that a 'keep going' or an 'ow'?"

Folded double, Wheeljack panted quiet, urgent cycles of air that did nothing to cool his racing engine. Ratchet could feel the hot blasts against his face. The engineer stayed forward a minute more, although his hands slowly relaxed their painful grip on Ratchet's shoulders. He turned his head as if it took effort, and his audio indicators flickered weakly.

"I, uh, that was an overload," he said. "You can finish the experiment, but, er, unexpected error in subject?"

Ratchet sighed - more of an exasperated harrumph - and patted Wheeljack's tire. "Experiment over. That's about what I expected as a result, just not quite that…strong, you might say." Hypothesis confirmed. He still wasn't sure what the cure was, but at least now he had a root cause for all the problems.

Eventually, he settled for sending out a shipwide memo about the Autobots' previously unknown erogenous zone. _'Don't touch a fellow soldier's interface equipment without consent'_ solved a lot of the problems handily enough, now that people knew how to treat knocking shoulders in the halls or kicking each other in the ankles during hand-to-hand combat. And really, the most difficult part had been just plain not knowing what was going on with their own bodies. The oversensitivity complaints ebbed once people got used to treating their tires like they would their actual interface equipment.

The chairs at the duty stations were replaced, of course, but not before they became popular for reasons no one would confess to on-duty. Ratchet only found out about the newly-dubbed 'sex chairs' when he walked in on, well. Prowl stiffly conceded that _'Don't touch tires in public'_ rule was a good idea, and the chairs were removed from all offices and common areas. Ratchet didn't ask how many vanished into officers' quarters. He didn't want to know. He'd seen too much already.

Sadly, his own tires didn't have nearly the sensitivity most people had, but then again, he'd always enjoyed lasting longer than his partners. And since Wheeljack had spread the word far and wide about his successful experiment, Ratchet had no lack of those!

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	89. Pt 89: Sex tapesmaking porn

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 89:**_ _"sex tapes/making porn_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Novel," Ratchet noted dryly when the story broke across the human news networks. Humans were obsessed with sex. The slightest hint of sexual relations between Hollywood celebrities prompted 24-hour TV news coverage, and political sex scandals created shrieking across AM/FM, TV, and printed papers. Having a sex tape from the aliens from outer space turned every so-called news entity into a shark at a feeding frenzy.

From Ratchet's perspective, it was refreshingly naïve. Look, in his day, the Senate had policy-based scandals every other day back before the war. A Senator could have six sex drones, nine courtesans, a half-dead street hooker, five interns, two secretaries, and another nineteen Senators all in the same orgy of a meeting, and the big story of the day from that hot mess would be that they'd signed the mine closure for Kaon into effect. Maybe that wasn't as sensationalized as human news, but Cybertronians weren't as obsessed by sex. Sex was a natural thing. Interfacing anyone they wanted was fine so long as it was consensual, and even if it wasn't, that paled before politics that affected whole swathes of the larger population.

Brutally dismissive as it was, that was Cybertronian news. Sex didn't sell. Policies did.

This fuss over their sex lives was bizarre. They were fighting in a life-or-death battle that spanned planets, and the humans fixated on this? Yes, Prowl clanged some of his subordinates. So what? Power imbalance, yes, of course, but…nobody was complaining. Everybody involved walked away satisfied. Sure, it was a little unsettling to realize other Autobots had been filming it for their own use later, and the Decepticons had apparently infiltrated the Ark to film it to sell to the humans, but overall, so what?

In the interest of good relations with the humans, Prowl refrained from so-called 'improper' relations with the common rank and file soldiers from then on. Much complaining commenced.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	90. Pt 90: Cum swapping

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 90:**_ _"Cum swapping_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

If the Autobots ever wrote an unofficial guide to their base, there really would be an entire section dedicated to various sexual dos and don'ts. And while there would probably be subsections about how to pork some fancy noblemech tailpipe (fill out the application, prepare a resume, write an essay of intent with explicit examples, and have at least three references ready) and footnotes on seducing the wild Ratchet ("Wanna frag?" usually worked; Ratchet was a big fan of open communication), the ending notes would definitely include warnings about what to do and what _not_ to do afterward, for the love of Primus.

Do _not_ announce via the base PA system that you laid Optimus Prime. No, not even if he was just as good as everyone imagined. Or if you do, at least include some juicy details.

 _Do_ send Prowl a token of affection the morning after. He's a total closet romantic.

 _Do_ pretend that Sunstreaker was the best you've ever had. Don't question this one. Just do it.

 _Do_ Cosmos. Full stop.

Do _not_ frag a Decepticon and come back to base without a full wash of everything, inside and out. The argument that "It was just a blowjob!" didn't hold up, especially since Hound smelled mingled scents of you _and_ a 'Con on your breath. It just led to awkward explanations, and somewhere around the point of picturing the two of you kissing sloppily after overload, even Jazz started looking embarrassed by the details. That slag just wasn't kosher.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	91. Pt 91: Pegging

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 91:**_ _"pegging_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

The Constructicons had reigned as the kinkiest team around simply by being the only gestalt for eons. Suddenly there was competition for the title. First the Stunticons, then the Aerialbots, and then Combaticons, and frag there were a lot of them. And some of them (looking at you, Protectobots) had a medic _inside the team_ for additional consultation on physical limits and associated safety advice. It just wasn't _fair ._

So taking the title for Kinkiest Combiner Team turned into a group event. There just wasn't any way to compete against Defensor otherwise. Come on, a threesome with Omega Supreme _and_ Optimus Prime? Now the Protectobots were just showing off.

Well, they were about to be de-throned.

"I'm not made to be a leg," Motormaster grumbled, but not even his bad mood could stand up against the ridiculousness of one-upping the Constructicons and the Protectobots in one fell swoop with a cross-factional component-trade. For that, he'd strap on cobbled-together surge protectors and plug parts he didn't even have into sockets Silverbolt was pretending to be compatible with. Tt felt funny, but it'd be worth it.

"Nnngh," Slingshot said from between Wildrider and Dragstrip.

"You okay?" Silverbolt called, worried.

"Mmph. Fine. Just…" He glanced sidelong at Dragstrip. "You couldn't warm your gear teeth up before trying to catch mine? Cold, mech. That's cold."

The Stunticon blinked at him. "What, you guys do? We just kind of," he mined it by thrusting his forefinger into the hole formed by his other hand's thumb and forefinger, "shove it in until it catches. I, uh, I mean, we don't combine outside of combat, y'know?"

"Menasor's hard on the furniture," Motormaster growled in gruff explanation.

"Ow! Nothing, nothing." Silverbolt waved away Motormaster's suspicious look. "Nothing wrong at all."

That right there looked like a pained expression under an unconvincing smile. Motormaster looked down at the plug he'd just pushed into the Autobot's socket and reconsidered his methods. He supposed he could _try_ to be a little more considerate, since they were supposed to be getting it on to rub it into the Protectobots' collective faces. Even if that particular plug was a fake and he wasn't really a leg.

He discreetly took a moment to warm up his gears before transforming to meet Silverbolt, their parts meshing in a thoroughly unnatural and _absolutely filthy kinky ahahah suck it Protectobots_ combination.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	92. Pt 92: Battle Fragging

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 92:**_ _"_ Battle Fragging _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

One of the secrets held by the High Commands on both sides of the war was what happened whenever Megatron and Optimus Prime fought directly.

It's exactly what you think happened.

Not every time, of course, because that would be the sign of a relation made of particularly kinky and violent dates. It'd be a lot better for Cybertron if that's all the war was, but no. No, there had to be the perfect combination of hand-to-hand combat, a bit of isolation from the main battle, and maybe a lapse in whatever side relationship one or both of them had going on. Given the sheer amount of sexual tension in their _regular_ fights, the detonation of sexual frustration when they lost control could floor an entire battalion.

To put it plainly, the two of them had an unhealthy amount of charisma normally. Unleashed during fragging, the wild flare of their bared sparks pulsed enough energy that it crawled over everyone else's armor in thin lines of crackling blue and white.

At least it wasn't hard to find them once they'd started. With the problem that they weren't likely to stop anytime soon once they'd started.

"I already ordered the Armada off to the north," Starscream snapped as Prowl screeched around the corner behind him. "Back off with the artillery or I'll bring them back!"

Prowl's lips thinned in disapproval, but he nodded stiff agreement. "Consider it done." Perceptor could invent an appropriately technobabbly reason for why the area had to be evacuated. Hopefully before anyone _else_ succumbed to the seductive pull of the energy infecting all of them. "Your wingmate is safe, by the way."

"I wasn't worried." And Starscream probably hadn't been, knowing him. It was information offered under the informal ceasefire these events always provoked, however, so he grudgingly traded a tidbit in return. "Your scout will be returned once Soundwave extracts him from his…" He made a vague gesture chestward, indicating the Cassette carrier's tray, and Prowl didn't even want to know which Cassette Bumblebee had gone in after. For all he knew, it was an orgy.

That's what Skywarp's ambush of Ironhide had turned into, even if Wheeljack and Jazz had looked vaguely worried as they joined in. It wasn't that any of them were weak-willed. They'd just been near the first pulse of spark energy unleashed, and the lust was strong.

Speaking of which. "We shouldn't," Prowl protested without much conviction as Starscream reached out. "We should mmm." He'd forgotten how well Starscream could kiss, forgotten the bitter taste of resentment and reluctant arousal as the Seeker opened his mouth, clever tongue flirting with his own.

"They're not going anywhere," Starscream said when he lifted his head, the first words said in quite a while. Prowl's hands slid behind his neck, pulling down, and he lowered his head again.

They said nothing more.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


	93. Pt 93: PoliticsConvenience

**[* * * * *]**

 _**Pt. 93:**_ _"Politics/Convenience_ _"_

 **[* * * * *]**

* * *

It's for the best that they never talked about work. Optimus Prime was obsessed with Megatron, and Prowl knew more than was advisable. There was such a thing as 'plausible deniability' in politics, and in the silence between them.

To be honest, what they shared in Optimus' quarters had nothing to do with talking. They were using each other, plain and simple.

If it had been left up to the Prime, Prowl was rather certain they'd frag in the dark. The tight squeeze of Optimus' hands and harsh breathing when Prowl fought back betrayed that their pleasure had little to do with shared affection. In his turn, Prowl found Optimus Prime more amendable to his proposals when sated the night before. It wasn't anything as evil as outright manipulation. It was simply the psychology of familiarity breeding forgiveness. Optimus was far more likely to look upon ideas and think the best of them if he remembered overloading any time he saw Prowl's name under the subject line.

Optimus Prime found a willing body in Prowl. Prowl knew it was crude of him to think that, but most of the time, anyone could have replaced him. Maybe it was only the Prime's declared friendship that made propositioning him acceptable instead of random Autobots. Prowl didn't mind being used all that much. Optimus Prime was, for all his faults, a dedicated lover. An interfacing toy would hardly supply Prowl with as much attention, although sometimes he found the offlined optics distasteful.

But every once and a while, Prowl snarled up at him, trying to force the damn Prime to be there, to see him, to truly understand that the body in his bed wasn't who he pretended. He turned the lights up to maximum and insisted on foreplay, intimate and lengthy, until the Prime growled in that dark, impatient voice underpinned by the rev of a heavyduty engine. Prowl smiled, then, grimly pleased.

The Prime might turn down his next proposal, yes. It was a price Prowl chose to pay.

He thought, mind distant after a particularly violent session, optics vaguely pointed at the ceiling, that other people likely didn't think of political negotiations while interfacing. The thought disturbed him for a brief time, but the Prime stirred, mask scraping on his chest, and Prowl sent a command to dim the lights. Optimus Prime relaxed in the dimness, comforted by imagined company. Prowl settled into the immediate, possessive embrace the half-asleep mech drew him into, and he let the thought go.

For tonight, they'd both pretend to have what they wanted, and want what they had.

* * *

 **[* * * * *]**


End file.
